Frederick Townsend Martin (December 6, 1849 – March 8, 1914) was a New York City writer, advocate for the poor, and an acknowledged leader of society in New York. He was referred to as a "millionaire with a mission."

Early life
Martin was born in Albany, New York on December 6, 1849 to Henry Hull Martin (1809–1886) and Anna Townsend (1815–1866). His maternal grandfather was Solomon Townsend, a prominent merchant in Albany, and his siblings were Henry Townsend Martin (d. 1915), Bradley Martin (1841–1913), who married Cornelia Sherman, Howard Townsend Martin, and Alice Townsend. His niece, Bradley's daughter, Cornelia Martin (1877-1961), married William Craven, 4th Earl of Craven (1868–1921).

He was educated at the Albany Boys Academy and graduated from the Albany Law School in 1872 and served as a colonel in the New York National Guard, as judge advocate.

Career
At the time of the election U.S. President Harrison, Martin said:

It matters not one iota what political party is in power or what President holds the reins of office.  We are not politicians or public thinkers; we are the rich; we own America; we got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it if we can by throwing all the tremendous weight of our support, our influence, our money, our political connections, our purchased Senators, our hungry Congressmen, our public-speaking demagogues into the scale against any legislature, any political platform, any presidential campaign that threatens the integrity of our estate.
In 1911, he wrote The Passing of the Idle Rich.  He would travel to the Bowery Mission in New York City to visit with the homeless. He hosted an annual Christmas dinner for the homeless on the Lower East Side. Martin's writings often criticized the extravagances of the rich - the very circles in which he traveled - and preached that "...where idleness and extravagance creep in decay begins. Nations as well as individuals have to be reminded of the dangers of these evils and they must be faced."

Martin received a large sum of money on the death of his brother, Bradley Martin. Martin was referred to as a successor to Ward McAllister and Harry Lehr as the leader of society in New York.  Just prior to his death in 1914, he bought a 10-year lease of 6 Cumberland Place from Gowdy, to install an art collection bequeathed to him by his "intimate friend" Henry Sands. It was Sands intention that both of their collections be kept together and housed in London. After his death, his collection went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Personal life

Martin, who did not marry, died on 8 March 1914 at the Hotel Berkeley in London, England of heart failure, his body was returned to America for burial. His funeral was held at Christ Church in London on March 11, 1914.

Clubs and organizations
Martin was a director of the Metropolitan Trust Company and was a member of a number of social clubs, including the Metropolitan Club, Knickerbocker Club, and Aero Club in New York, the Marlborough Club, St James's Club, Bachelors Club, and Wellington Club of London, the Travelers Club, Automobile Club, and Polo Club of Paris, and the Country Club of Puteaux France.

Publications

References

1849 births
1914 deaths
Albany Law School alumni

Frederick Townsend Martin


Glenn Gant (1911–1999) was a painter who was best known for his Regionalist and American Scene paintings.

Gant was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1911.  He began his art career at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1930, and he studied under famed Regionalist artist Thomas Hart Benton in the mid- to late 1930s.  In the 1930s and 1940s, Gant became widely known in his own right for his regionalist paintings of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.  World War II interrupted his career, as he served as an infantryman in the U.S. Army.  Gant returned to Kansas City after the war and was a member of the Art Institute's faculty until 1960.  During the early 1950s Gant studied at the University of the Americas in Mexico City.  His work of the time was influenced by Mexican artists David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. In 1960, Gant moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where he continued to paint until his death in 1999.  Gant's paintings are in many notable private collections throughout the country.

References

 The Artists Bluebook.  Lonnie Pierson Dunbar, editor. P. 479. March 2005.
 Under the Influence: The Students of Thomas Hart Benton.  Marianne Berardi. The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. 1993

1911 births
1999 deaths
20th-century American painters
20th-century American printmakers
American male painters
United States Army personnel of World War II
Artists from Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City Art Institute alumni
Modern painters
People from Carroll County, Arkansas
People from Eureka Springs, Arkansas
United States Army soldiers
20th-century American male artists

Glenn Gant


Wilbur Chocolate is one of four brands manufactured by Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate North America. Most of the Wilbur brand products were produced in plants chocolate manufacturing company located in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

History
Wilbur Chocolate was founded in Philadelphia in 1865 by Henry Oscar Wilbur and Samuel Croft. Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate NA produces hundreds of millions of pounds of chocolate and confectionery products a year. These ingredients are sold to food and candy manufactures across the Americas.

The company was bought by Cargill in 1992 and is part of that company's cocoa and chocolate labels, which also includes Peter's Chocolate (bought from Nestlé in 2002), Gerkens Cacao, and Veliche Belgian chocolate

Cargill closed the Wilbur Chocolate Factory in early 2016. By the summer of 2018 the former factory was being converted into condos.

Cocoa Sourcing
Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate is focused on sustainable cocoa farming through the Cargill Cocoa Promise and UTZ Certification.

Wilbur Chocolate Candy Store and Museum
The company's Wilbur Chocolate Factory in Lititz sells an assortment of Wilbur chocolates and other candy, and features the free Candy Americana Museum that tells the history of the company and how their chocolate is made. The exhibits include antique chocolate molds, tins and boxes, as well as hand-painted European and Oriental antique porcelain chocolate pots.  The museum was created by Penny Buzzard, wife of former Wilbur president John Buzzard, and opened in 1972.

On March 31, 2008, then Senator Barack Obama visited Wilbur Chocolate Company. Mr. Obama greeted a sizable crowd outside before venturing inside to taste-test various treats offered to the calorie-conscious candidate. The hometown newspaper, the Lititz Record Express, documented his visit with a photo gallery.

Wilbur Factory Closure & Redevelopment
In January 2016, Cargill stopped chocolate production at this historic landmark and laid off approximately 130 Wilbur employees. This officially ended Wilbur's celebrated 125-year-old tradition of chocolate-making in at this site. According to an announcement on October 29, 2015, Cargill would "close its plant in Lititz, Penn., on Broad Street and shift production of these offerings to Cargill's other, more modern and efficient plants in Mount Joy, Lititz (West Lincoln Avenue) and Hazleton, Penn.; Milwaukee; and Ontario, Canada."

The closed factory was redeveloped into 25 condos and a hotel. The Market at Wilbur, Blackworth Live Fire Grill, a restaurant opened August 2019, while the Wilbur Lititz, a Tapestry Collection hotel by Hilton, opened September 2019.

Wilbur Buds
Its most popular candy, the Wilbur Bud, was introduced in 1893. Hershey's Kiss, which debuted in 1907, closely resembles a Wilbur Bud. The two products are also frequently compared due to the proximity of their manufacturers; Lititz is approximately 20 miles (32 km) from The Hershey Company's global headquarters in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Wilbur Buds are not individually wrapped and have the word WILBUR on the bottom of the chocolate.

See also
 List of bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturers
 List of food and beverage museums

References

External links
Official website
Company history

1865 establishments in Pennsylvania
Buildings and structures in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Cargill
Culture of Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Chocolate companies based in Pennsylvania
Chocolate museums in the United States
Companies based in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Food and drink companies established in 1865
Food museums in the United States
Lititz, Pennsylvania
Museums in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Shops in the United States
Tourist attractions in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Wilbur Chocolate Company


Peter Case (born April 5, 1954) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His career is wide-ranging, from rock n' roll and blues, to folk rock and solo acoustic performance.

Biography

Early career
Case was born in Buffalo, New York and lived in nearby Hamburg, New York. He wrote his first song "Stay Away," in 1965, at the age of eleven.  A veteran of several rock bands and the local bar scene as a teenager, Case dropped out of high school when he was fifteen (he would later earn a GED), and after several years of traveling arrived in 1973 in San Francisco, where he performed as a street musician. During this period a documentary about the local music scene, Nightshift, directed by Bert Deivert, captured the young Case on film. In 1976, he teamed up with Jack Lee and Paul Collins to form the early punk-era band The Nerves in San Francisco. The group's 1976 EP track, "Hanging on the Telephone", was later recorded by Blondie.

The Nerves moved to Los Angeles on January 1, 1977, and played and promoted some of the first punk-era shows in that city, performing at The Masque, and the Whisky a Go Go, among other venues. They toured nationally in 1977, the first independent band of their era to do a national tour, as they opened shows for the Ramones, and Mink DeVille, and performed on co-bills with The Nuns, Devo, and Pere Ubu.

After the Nerves broke up in 1978, Case formed the rock n' roll band The Plimsouls in 1979. The Plimsouls became one of the top drawing live bands in California soon after the release of their debut EP "Zero Hour" on the Beat Records label in 1979. They grew in popularity and had two major label albums, the first on Planet/Elektra in 1981, and the next on Geffen Records, in 1983. In 1982, "A Million Miles Away"  was released as a 12" single, on the Shaky City/Bomp! label, and became the band's signature song. It was a radio hit in California, and some other regions of the U.S. It eventually charted at number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100. Their songs "A Million Miles Away," "The Oldest Story in the World," and "Everywhere At Once" were included in the movie Valley Girl (1983), but by the time that movie had become a cult favorite, the group had broken up.

Case briefly performed with Gurf Morlix, Victoria Williams (Case's first wife), and Warren Tornado Klein as the Incredibly Strung Out Band, but their collaboration never resulted in a record.

Solo career

Case struck out on his own with the self-titled album Peter Case released in 1986 on Geffen Records. Produced by T Bone Burnett and Mitchell Froom, the record included three songs co-written by Burnett and one by Victoria Williams, and also featured the talents of Williams, Morlix, Klein, Mike Campbell (of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), John Hiatt, Jim Keltner, Jerry Marotta, Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds), and Van Dyke Parks, among others. One of the songs on the album, "Old Blue Car," was nominated for a Grammy Award. Robert Palmer chose the album as the No. 1 release for 1986 in his year-in-review wrap-up for The New York Times.

In 1989, Case released a second solo album, The Man With the Blue Post-Modern Fragmented Neo-Traditionalist Guitar, this time with the help of artists like David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, Ry Cooder, and Benmont Tench. While not a major commercial success, the album was a favorite of critics and other musicians: Bruce Springsteen told Rolling Stone magazine that he was listening to Peter Case more than anyone else that year.

In 1992, Case scored a radio hit with the song "Dream About You" which peaked at #16 on the U.S. Billboard Modern Rock charts. After a third album for Geffen, Six-Pack of Love,  Case recorded a live-in-the-studio album of cover versions of folk, blues, and country songs, Peter Case Sings Like Hell, which was released on Case's own Travelin' Light label. Case signed a contract with Vanguard Records, and the record was re-released on that label in 1993. His next Vanguard record, Torn Again, was issued in 1995, and features Case with a band including the rhythm section of Don Heffington and Jerry Scheff, with Greg Leisz on guitar.

In 1996, the Plimsouls reunited for the first of several reunions. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Case continued to release albums as a solo performer, moving in an increasingly acoustic-oriented direction, and playing clubs and small venues. Torn Again was followed by Full Service No Waiting (1998), Flying Saucer Blues (2000), and Beeline (2002) all on Vanguard, in addition to Thank You St. Jude (2001), a self-released CD that featured David Perales on fiddle and background vocals. In a review of Flying Saucer Blues, critic Bill Wasserzieher declared, "I am convinced that nobody of Case's generation writes better songs or does better work in the tradition of Woody Guthrie."

In 2004 Vanguard released Who's Gonna Go Your Crooked Mile, a compilation of tracks from his albums for the label, which also included two previously unrecorded songs, "Wake Up Call" and "My Generation's Golden Handcuff Blues". Both tracks gave evidence of Case's strongly held political convictions.

In the late 1990s, he curated the musical program for the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In 2001, he organized, produced, and performed on Avalon Blues, a tribute album to blues music pioneer Mississippi John Hurt, which was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album. Case also performed Beatles songs at the Hollywood Bowl with George Martin. Case's solo performances have featured his own compositions as well as covers of songs by Memphis Minnie, Sleepy John Estes, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and others. He frequently conducts songwriting workshops in California, where he now resides, and in other locations.

In February 2006, Hungry for Music, a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, released a three-disc tribute to Case, entitled A Case for Case; the set featured cover versions of Case's songs performed by various artists, including John Prine, Susan Cowsill, Joe Ely, Dave Alvin, Maura O'Connell and others.

In 2006 Case began posting on his blog sections of a memoir entitled As Far As You Can Get Without a Passport, which was subsequently issued in book form in January 2007 by Everthemore Books. The memoir covers Case's very early days from the time he left his native upstate New York and wound up singing and playing on the streets of San Francisco. This period inspired some of his most memorable songs, including "Entella Hotel "and "Travellin' Light." John Doe, co-founder of the Los Angeles punk band X, contributed an introduction to the book. Case has continued to write and post autobiographical additional material.

On December 6, 2007, Case's Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album. The record was produced by Ian Brennan. The album featured "Every 24 Hours," a duet with Richard Thompson on harmony vocals and guitar, and "That Soul Twist," a duet with Merle Haggard pedal-steel man Norm Hamlet.

In January 2009, Case underwent heart surgery, leading to fund raising efforts by other musicians to help defray his medical costs. Case's next project, Wig!, a CD/LP  was released on June 29, 2010, by Yep Roc Records.  The record was an interpretation of electric blues, and featured D.J. Bonebrake on drums, and Memphis musician Ron Franklin on slide guitar and electric piano. Case and Franklin composed a number of the songs the day before the sessions, which lasted three days.

In 2012, The Case Files, a compilation of "studio out-takes, demos, and live shots,"  was released by Alive Naturalsound Records. This record included two 1985 demos made with T Bone Burnett, some spoken word pieces with music from a longer piece called Bomblight Prayer Vigil,  and various other Case rarities.

In December 2014, Case went into the Carriage House studio in Los Angeles, and recorded HWY 62, an LP of new original songs, with a band including Ben Harper on lead guitar, D.J. Bonebrake of X, on drums, keyboardist Jebin Bruni, and bassist David Carpenter. The album was released in 2015.

September 2016 saw the re-release of his debut solo album expanded with 7 extra tracks.

In December 2019, Case went to The Old Whaling Church in Martha's Vineyard and recorded with producer Ron Franklin,The Midnight Broadcast, a concept album of traditional and contemporary material featuring Cindy Wasserman (vocals), Bert Deivert (mandolin, drums), Lee Fortier (harmonica, vocals) Franklin (moog, maracas) and Ross Johnson (as the DJ). Mixed by Boo Mitchell at Royal Recorders in Memphis, the album was released in 2021.

Reunion tribute tour
In 2012, longtime musical partners Case and Paul Collins announced a reunion tour paying tribute to their groups The Nerves, The Breakaways, The Beat and The Plimsouls. The touring band line-up for the Collins and Case tour was augmented by members of The Paul Collins Beat (Timm Buechler, bass, and Amos Pitsch of Tenement, drums, and Tim Schweiger, a veteran musician). According to the Los Angeles Times Music Blog of March 22, 2012, the tour "fell apart" early due to "musical differences".

Discography

Bibliography
Bomblight Prayer Vigil. Verb, Issue Two. 2006.
As Far As You Can Get Without a Passport. Everthemore. 2007.
Epistolary Rex, With David Ensminger. CreateSpace. 2011.
Somebody Told The Truth: Selected Lyrics and Stories. Boom & Chime Books. 2020.

References

External links

2012 Peter Case & Paul Collins Tribute To The Nerves Reunion Tour press release announcement

1954 births
Living people
American folk singers
American harmonica players
American male singer-songwriters
Record producers from New York (state)
American rock songwriters
American rock singers
Musicians from Buffalo, New York
The Nerves members
Fast Folk artists
American folk rock musicians
Alive Naturalsound Records artists
People from Hamburg, New York
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)

Peter Case


Levon Aronian, born 6 October 1982 in Yerevan, is an Armenian chess Grandmaster. He is Armenia's #1 player.

Aronian won the Chess World Cup 2005. He led the Armenian national team to the gold medals in the 37th Chess Olympiad, Turin 2006, the 38th Olympiad, Dresden 2008, and the World Team Chess Championship in Ningbo, 2011. In the Chess Olympiad 2010 at Khanty-Mansiysk he won the silver medal for his individual performance on board one.

He won the FIDE Grand Prix 2008–2010, qualifying him for the Candidates tournament for the World Chess Championship 2012, where he was knocked out in the first round.

Aronian has had a string of outstanding tournament results since reaching the top with a joint win at Wijk aan Zee 2008. His latest, and perhaps greatest victory was in January 2012, at the same Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee. The field included world #1 Magnus Carlsen, defending champion Hikaru Nakamura, and former world champion Veselin Topalov, among others. The average rating of the field was 2755, making this thirteen-round event a category 21 tournament. After twelve rounds, Aronian was in clear first place with 8.5 points going into the final round, one point ahead of Carlsen and Teimour Radjabov. In the final round, Aronian drew against Radjabov with the white pieces in the King's Indian Defence. With the draw, Aronian finished with 9/13 (+5), a tournament performance rating of 2891. He took clear first place a point ahead of Carlsen, Radjabov and Fabiano Caruana.

Aronian was declared the best sportsman of Armenia in 2005, and was awarded the title of "Honoured Master of Sport of the Republic of Armenia" in 2009.

References

1982 births
Living people

Chess grandmasters
Armenian chess players
People from Yerevan

Levon Aronian


Michael Deane (born 9 March 1977) was an English cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a right-arm medium-pace bowler who played for Derbyshire in 1999.

Despite signing a contract in the 1999 season, after a successful run in the 1998 Second XI, and despite being amongst Dominic Cork's preferred non-signings for the Derbyshire team, he failed to appear often within the starting lineup of the first team, though his occasional swing bowling was enough to put even the most experienced of batsmen off, catching players like Anthony McGrath and Richard Blakey off guard.

Deane had been playing in the Second XI since 1994, where he debuted against a Durham team who drew their game after forfeiting their second innings. He appeared regularly in the Second XI Championship in 1998 and 1999, but only made two County Championship appearances, as a tailend batsman.

External links
Michael Deane at CricketArchive

1977 births
English cricketers
Living people
Derbyshire cricketers
Place of birth missing (living people)

Michael Deane (cricketer)


Amergin of Maigh Seóla, father of Finbarr of Cork, fl. c. 550.

Amergin is described as an artisan from Connacht, and a member of the Uí Briúin. He is said to have belonged to a branch that ruled Maigh Seóla, although they would not be considered among the Uí Briúin till the 10th century.

He settled in Muskerry, County Cork. He obtained work as chief smith to King Tighernach of Ui Eachach, and in time he gained land at Achaidh Durbchon (near Gougane Barra, source of the river Lee).

Against Tighernach's wishes, Amergin married a member of the royal household. They were caught and sentenced to be burned alive for defying Tighernach but in what was regarded as a sign of divine intervention, a storm of heavy rain put out the fire. Thus they were set free.

A child was born from this union and they returned to Gougane Barra, where the boy was baptised Luan, or Lochan. When he was seven years old three clerics of Munster, returning from a pilgrimage to Leinster, happened to stop at the house of Amergin. They admired the boy for the grace of the Holy Spirit that seemed to them to shine in his face, and were allowed by his parents to take him away to be educated. He studied at a place called Sliabh Muinchill, where, as was usual at the time, he was tonsured and had his name changed. The cleric who cut his hair is said to have observed, "Fair (finn) is the hair (barra) of Luan." "Let this be his name," said another, "Barr Finn, or Finn Barr."

References
 The History and Folklore of the Barony of Clare, Michael J. Hughes, c. 1993.

External links
History of Saint Finbarre's cathedral and about Finbarr
Finbarr brief overview

6th-century Irish people
People from County Galway

Amergin of Maigh Seóla


Jayantha Wattavidanage, is a limnologist, herpetologist and prominent molecular parasitologist in Sri Lanka. He is a well known zoologist in the country, where he has lot of media popularity. He is also a recipient of many research awards including the Presidential Award for his research publications.

He is a constant participant and resource provider in Doramadalawa TV program. He currently a senior lecturer in Zoology at The Open University of Sri Lanka, since 1990.

Wattavidanage is the author of a large number of newspaper and magazine articles such as Rivira and Vidusara local newspapers and the narrator and contributor for the animal documentary Macro World which was telecasted on Swarnavahini. He also held the posts of Chairman at the National Committee for Science Popularizing, National Science Foundation in Sri Lanka as well.

Dr. Wattavidanage graduated from University of Sri Jayewardenepura and took M.Phil. from the same university through limnology. He completed his Ph.D. from University of Colombo in following years. His Ph.D research was based on molecular genetics of Malaria at University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Publications and co-publications

1. 	Bandarage, Gundya., Edirisinghe,  E.A.D.N.D., Rajendra, J.C.N., Wattavidanage, Jayantha November 2015. Effectiveness of a modified version of peer-assisted study sessions in improving academic performance: An open and distance learning case study. Annual Academic Sessions of the Open University of Sri Lanka.

2. 	Tantrigoda, Ramani., Wattavidanage, Jayantha., Rajendra, J.C.N., Bandarage, Gundya. November 2014. Making "Significant Others" partners in motivating freshman of the B.Sc Degree programme at the Open University of Sri Lanka:A preliminary study.

3.	Madhava, W - Botejue, S - Wattavidanage, Jayantha 2011. Herpetofaunal diversity and distribution in Kalugala proposed forest reserve, Western province of Sri Lanka p. 65-80.

4.	Perera, Palinda., Burt, Peter., Amarasekera, H. S., Wattavidanage, Jayantha. Distribution, ecology and morphology of a newly discovered Poecilotheria species of Sri Lanka (Araneae - Theraphosidae).

References

Living people
Sinhalese people
Sri Lankan zoologists
University of Sri Jayewardenepura
University of Colombo
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Limnologists
Herpetologists
Year of birth missing (living people)
Sri Lankan environmentalists

Jayantha Wattavidanage


Peter Vaudreuil Lamarque (; born 21 May 1948) is a British aesthethician and philosopher of art, working in the analytic tradition. Since 2000, he has been a professor of philosophy at the University of York. He is known primarily for his work in philosophy of literature and on the role of emotions in fiction.

Education
Lamarque was educated at Marlborough College and received a BA degree in English and Philosophy from the University of East Anglia. He then completed a BPhil in philosophy at The Queen's College, Oxford in 1972, where he worked under the supervision of Laurence Jonathan Cohen.

Career
From 1972 to 1995 Lamarque taught in the Philosophy Department at the University of Stirling, and from 1995 to 2000 he held the Ferens Chair in Philosophy at the University of Hull. In 2000, he moved to the University of York to take up his current position. He has held visiting positions in several universities around the world, including Cornell University and the Australian National University.

Lamarque has published extensively on various philosophical topics, mostly in the area of analytic philosophy of art. He published the first systematic articulation of an approach to the paradox of fiction usually referred to as 'thought theory'. He was editor of the British Journal of Aesthetics from 1995 to 2008. In 2009, he was chosen to give the first ever BSA/ASA Wollheim Memorial Lecture at the American Society for Aesthetics Annual Meeting. In 2018, he was awarded the "Premio Internazionale d'Estetica" by the Italian Society of Aesthetics.

Bibliography

Books
Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994 (with Stein Haugom Olsen)
 Fictional Points of View, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996
 The Philosophy of Literature, Oxford: Blackwell, 2009
 Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010 (winner of the American Society for Aesthetics Outstanding Monograph Prize for 2010)
 The Opacity of Narrative, London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2014
The Uselessness of Art: Essays in the Philosophy of Art and Literature, Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2020

Books (editor)
 Philosophy and Fiction: Essays in Literary Aesthetics, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1983
 Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language, New York: Elsevier Science, 1997
 Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition: An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004 (with Stein Haugom Olsen)

Articles
 "How Can We Fear and Pity Fictions?", British Journal of Aesthetics 21(4):291-304, 1981
 "The Death of the Author: An Analytical Autopsy", British Journal of Aesthetics 30(4):319-331, 1990
 "On Not Expecting Too Much from Narrative", Mind and Language 19(4):393-408, 2004
 "The Elusiveness of Poetic Meaning", Ratio 22(4):398-420, 2009
 "The Uselessness of Art", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68(3):205-214, 2010
 "Wittgenstein, Literature, and the Idea of a Practice", British Journal of Aesthetics 50(4):375-388, 2010
 "Poetry and Abstract Thought,"  Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 33 (2009), pp. 37–52

References

External links
Peter Lamarque's departmental webpage
VIDEO: Peter Lamarque, Poetry: A Problem for Analytic Philosophy
Peter Lamarque's complete list of publications

1948 births
Living people
People educated at Marlborough College
Alumni of the University of East Anglia
Alumni of The Queen's College, Oxford
Philosophers of art
Analytic philosophers
21st-century British philosophers
Literary scholars
Academic journal editors
Academics of the University of York
Academics of the University of Stirling
Academics of the University of Hull

Peter Lamarque


News from Nowhere is a novel by William Morris describing the main character time traveling in his sleep and wakes up to find himself in a magical utopia based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. This land is anarchist with no government, no form of money, and no major cities (just idyllic villages). marriage, divorce, social ranks and prisons would not exist. The agrarian society described in the book functions because the people find pleasure in nature and their work.

1890 books
English novels

News from Nowhere


Trout Fishing in America is a novella written by Richard Brautigan and published in 1967. It is technically Brautigan's first novel; he wrote it in 1961 before A Confederate General from Big Sur, which was published first.

Overview
Trout Fishing In America is an abstract book without a clear central storyline. Instead, the book contains a series of anecdotes broken into chapters, with the same characters often reappearing from story to story.  The settings of most of the chapters occur in three locales: Brautigan's childhood in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.; his day-to-day adult life in San Francisco; and a camping trip in Idaho with his wife and infant daughter during the summer of 1961.  Most of the chapters were written during this trip. An excerpt appeared as the lead piece in the Evergreen Review, Volume 7, No. 31 (Oct.–Nov. 1963).

The phrase "Trout Fishing in America" is used in various ways: it is the title of the book, a character, a hotel, the act of fishing itself, a modifier (one character is named "Trout Fishing in America Shorty") and other things.  Brautigan uses the theme of trout fishing as a point of departure for thinly veiled and often comical critiques of mainstream American society and culture.  Several symbolic objects, such as a mayonnaise jar, a Ben Franklin statue in San Francisco's Washington Square and trout, reappear throughout the book.

The cover of the book is a photograph of Brautigan and a friend identified as Michaela Le Grand, whom he referred to as his "Muse." The photo was taken by Erik Weber, in San Francisco's Washington Square Park in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue. The first chapter of the book is an extended and fanciful description of this photo.

Arion Press published a deluxe edition of Trout Fishing in America in 2003, with a preface by Ron Loewinsohn, and a color lithograph in half the edition by Wayne Thiebaud.

Cultural influence

Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmitt named a crater explored in the Taurus-Littrow valley on the Moon "Shorty", after the character in the book.

In March 1994, a teenager named Peter Eastman Jr. from Carpinteria, California legally changed his name to "Trout Fishing in America". At around the same time, National Public Radio reported on a young couple who had named their baby "Trout Fishing in America". The song, "Tee Pees 1-12", from the album Fear Fun by Father John Misty, references the novella with the following lyrics: "Trout Fishing in America made me go and buy a pole. But by the time I got around to reading the book, I was a celebrated deep sea pro."

References

External links
 Entry on brautigan.net

1967 American novels
American novellas
Novels by Richard Brautigan
Postmodern novels
Novels set in San Francisco

Trout Fishing in America


Pakpattan () is the capital of Pakpattan District in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Pakpattan is also called the 'city of Baba Farid', in honour of the Sufi saint, Hazrat Baba Farid-ud-din Ganj Shakar whose shrine is located here. It is 190 km from Lahore and very close to Sahiwal, about 45 km. Pakpattan city is an old city. There is one postgraduate college for males called Faridia Degree College and one women's degree college as well. There are some government-funded schools such as Fazilka Islamia High School, Govt. High School, Urban area High School.

Tehsils of Punjab (Pakistan)
Pakpattan District

Pakpattan Tehsil


"Ill-Boding Patterns" is the thirteenth episode of the sixth season of the American fantasy drama series Once Upon a Time, which aired on March 19, 2017. In this episode, Gold must find a way to stop Gideon from going dark as he prepares to kill Emma, while Hook must find a way to hide the truth about Robert from her, and Wish Realm Robin seeks an ally to help escape Storybrooke. In the past, the legend of Beowulf and how he crossed paths with Rumplestiltskin is revealed.

Plot

Opening sequence
An Ogre from the Ogre Wars is featured in the forest.

Event chronology
The Enchanted Forest events take place after "Desperate Souls" and before "Nasty Habits." The Storybrooke events take place after "Murder Most Foul".

In the Characters' past
In the pre-first curse Enchanted Forest, the events of the first Ogre Wars are detailed. A young soldier is being encouraged by his leader, Beowulf, to keep fighting against the creatures. Beowulf then displays the sword, Hrunting, that Emma will take possession of in the future and leads his men into battle. However, despite killing some ogres, his men are all killed, and he is left as the only survivor. When Beowulf sees an ogre general and goes after it, it knocks his sword out of his hand and moves in to kill him, but then, Rumplestiltskin intervenes. He uses his dagger to genocide all of the creatures. His actions would cause a deeper rift between Rumplestiltskin and the teenage Baelfire. Later on at a village, the people ask Rumplestiltskin to defend them against a creature named Grendel. Baelfire, hoping that saving the village will restore Rumplestiltskin's good name, believes that he can do it without resorting to dark magic, so Rumplestiltskin gives him the dagger to keep him from using it.

When they arrived to the cave to draw out Grendel, Rumplestiltskin and Baelfire discover it was a setup by Beowulf, who wanted revenge on Rumplestiltskin for denying him victory during the Ogre Wars, by setting him up to frame the Dark One for the murder of the villagers. After Baelfire fails to stop Beowulf, Baelfire summons Rumplestiltskin, who defeats Beowulf. Baelfire wants him to stop Beowulf, but Rumplestiltskin refuses, opting to send them to a new village instead, but in the end, Baelfire killed Beowulf after he commanded his father to do so. Rumplestiltskin also collects the sword Hrunting after this. The events convinces Baelfire that they should use Dark Magic to protect themselves, but Rumplestiltskin feels otherwise, and secretly gives Baelfire a forgetting potion he slipped inside his drink to make him forget about what happened, to keep him from going dark. Unfortunately, Baelfire's memory would later come back when he saw Hrunting, and this time, he accused his father of killing Beowulf.

In Storybrooke
At Granny's, Archie finds Hook drinking, now that he realized that he killed Robert, who happens to be Emma's grandfather; however, he decides not to divulge details. When he later visited Emma at the house, he wants to tell Emma the truth, but Emma thinks he is keeping something from her and she shows him the engagement ring that he wanted to give her, and she tells him that she will marry him. Hook gets down on one knee and proposes, but decides not to tell Emma about Robert, by keeping that to himself.

Meanwhile, Belle and Mother Superior search for Gideon, believing that he is after the sword Hrunting that Emma had the night they first met, and as expected they were right, because at the Sheriff's Station, Gideon is caught by Gold while trying to obtain the sword fragment and his father uses his magic to knock Gideon out. At the Clock Tower, Gideon comes to and is tied up, with the magic-draining cuff on, as Gold tells him about what happened during the first Ogre Wars when he attempted to stop it. Gideon then told his father about what the Black Fairy did to him and why he wanted revenge. Gideon soon catches on to Gold's plan to erase his memory after he was given a tea that was laced with the forgetting potion, but his time with the Black Fairy has shown him how to counter it, and during a hug, he takes the dagger to control his father. Gideon then uses the dagger to force Gold to reveal the sword's origin and its forger, and Gold tells him that it was the Blue Fairy who created it. As Gideon keeps Gold from stopping him, he goes to take Mother Superior's powers after he freezes her, Gold arrives and drains her magic for him, so Gideon won't go dark. This ends up putting the Mother Superior into a coma-like state. After the sword Hrunting is newly forged, Gideon returns the dagger to Gold.

At the same time, Robin has shown up at Zelena's place, and the witch is stunned to find him there. He wants to leave Storybrooke, and she agrees to help him, since she also wants to leave for New York City. However, Regina is waiting for them at the city limits, having caught on to Robin stealing the heart from the vault, and the anti-magic potion. However, when Robin attempts to use the anti-magic potion, it fails to break the protection spell, and instead, the barrier blasts him backwards. Knowing that he is stuck in Storybrooke, Regina, now convinced that the Wish Realm Robin will never live up to the one she remembers, offers to help him leave if he wants to do so. Later on, Regina and Zelena finally come to an understanding as sisters, but suddenly become aware that the Regina's other half, The Evil Queen, is missing from her cage. Unfortunately, the "serum" Evil Queen (still in her form as a cobra) doesn't stay missing for long, because afterward, Robin is bitten by the aforementioned creature, and it turns out that the anti-magic potion really works, since the spilled anti-magic potion on Robin's hand restores The Evil Queen to her normal form. Then, the Evil Queen offers to take Robin on a tour of Storybrooke from her viewpoint.

Production
Josh Dallas, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Jared Gilmore are credited but do not appear in this episode.

Title
The episode's title appears in a passage between the lines 1455 to 1458 of the poem Beowulf, in which Hrunting–the sword given to Beowulf by Unferth–is described: "The iron blade with its ill-boding patterns had been tempered in blood".

Reception

Reviews
Christine Laskodi of TV Fantic gave the episode a mild review: 3.0 out of 5.0
Entertainment Weekly gave the episode an C.

References

2017 American television episodes
Once Upon a Time (season 6) episodes
Works based on Beowulf
Television episodes directed by Ron Underwood

Ill-Boding Patterns


London After Midnight is an American rock band from California. Formed in 1990 by songwriter and instrumentalist Sean Brennan, London After Midnight has a following worldwide, with a large fan base in the goth subculture. However, in interviews Brennan has shunned the use of this label and others to describe his music, calling it "artistically limiting".

Ideology and themes
Brennan is known for his support of animal rights, pro-environmental and human rights issues, anti-corporate control of media, and progressive and liberal politics. He voices this support through London After Midnight Internet outlets, such as their official website and music.

History
London After Midnight formed in Los Angeles, California, and played at several clubs in the area starting in late 1990, with a debut concert at Los Angeles gothic rock club, Helter Skelter.

In the early days London After Midnight had various temporary members who joined Brennan when performing live, but did not perform on the albums. Tamlyn is credited on the first cassette recordings, co-authored the opening track "This Paradise" on 'Selected Scenes From The End of the World', contributed an instrumental called "Ice" for the 1998 release of Oddities at Brennan's request, and an instrumental entitled "Perversion" on the 93' Ruins demo tape released as a preview of what was to become their second album, Psycho Magnet.

Early performance lineups
After garnering a fanbase aided by the release of a self-titled demo, London After Midnight released their debut album Selected Scenes from the End of the World in 1991. Special effects artist Nick Benson played bass guitar in an early lineup of the band, and participated in songwriting. In 1992 bassist Michael Areklett joined the lineup after the resignation of live bassist Rob Podzunas. Like Tamlyn, Michael Areklett appeared live as a recurring member, rather than a guest. Around this period, Douglas Avery also joined, replacing live drummer Ian Haas. Eddie Hawkins was part of the original live line up, but was replaced in 1990. John Koviak performed live on bass from 1990–1992.

Touring and releases
In the earliest days the live band played mainly on the West Coast of the United States. Following the release of the self-titled debut, LAM gradually expanded their Californian fan base, eventually traveling to Mexico in 1994 (something few alternative acts were doing at the time) and progressing to tour the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, South America and further in the United States.

Brennan then expanded on the original demo release and recorded more songs for "Selected Scenes from the End of the World" released in late 1992.

Coinciding with the release of the follow-up album Psycho Magnet in 1996, London After Midnight headlined the Whitby Gothic Weekend in England, among other concerts in the UK, Europe, Mexico and the US. At this time, Brennan had begun to expand musically. The project continued on with a third album titled Oddities released in 1998, featuring a cover of a track named "Sally's Song" from the film The Nightmare Before Christmas. This CD was different from other releases in that it featured acoustic and ethereal alternative mixes of songs, along with a few new tracks.

Around this time London After Midnight was garnering international press and was featured on the covers of many magazines, while co-headlining major concert festivals like the Zillo summer festival, with The Cure and Green Day. LAM has since toured the world extensively playing alongside other popular bands such as Green Day, HIM (who have cited LAM as an influence), Rammstein, Soft Cell, and others, headlining and co-headlining to crowds of over 30,000 in Latin America, the US and Europe.

Recent times

The album, Violent Acts of Beauty, was released in 2007. LAM has, however, re-released (in 2003) two of the past three releases in Europe and the Russian Federation, (which charted on the Deutsche Alternative Charts) adding previously unreleased bonus tracks.

In 2006, a new London After Midnight song was released on the Saw II motion picture soundtrack.

In February 2007, a teaser trailer for London After Midnight's fourth studio album Violent Acts of Beauty was released on the band's official website and YouTube page. The trailer stated that the album was due for a spring/summer 2007 release. The album itself was released in fall 2007 (North America). To promote the new album, they played at various festivals in Europe (Greece, Portugal, France, Spain, Belgium, Germany) with bands like, Kirlian Camera, Dope stars, Noctivagus for example.

Live members

Current live band members
 Sean Brennan – songwriting, vocals, guitar, bass, cello, violin, keyboards, programming, drums (1989–present)
 Pete Pace – live drums (2008–present)
 Michael Areklett  – live bass (2018–present)
 Jeremy Kohnmann – live guitar (2022-present)

Former live members
 Tamlyn – keyboards, sounds, samplers, recorded on 'London After Midnight' demo, 1991, 'Selected Scenes From The End Of The World', 1994 (1&2)(1989–2003)
 Joe S. – drums (live and recorded for Violent Acts of Beauty & Saw II soundtrack) (2001–2008)
 Trouble Valli – live guitar (one concert only) (2008)
 Eddie Hawkins – live guitar (1989–1990, 2001–2008)
 Ian Haas – live drums (1988–1992)
 John Koviak – live bass/guitar (1989–1992)
 Douglas Avery – live drums (1992–1999)
 Rob Podzunas – live bass (1992–1992)
 Stacy – live guitar
 Michael Areklett – live bass (1992–2005)Rejoined on bass 2018-current
 William Skye – live guitar (1992–1999)
 Matthew Setzer – live guitar (2008–2019)
 Randy Mathias – live bass (2005–2018)

Discography

Albums
 Selected Scenes from the End of the World (1992) (re-release with bonus tracks 2003 and 2008)
 Psycho Magnet (1996) (re-release with bonus tracks 2003 and 2008)
 Violent Acts of Beauty (2007)

EPs
 Kiss (1995)

Demos
 London After Midnight (1991)
 Ruins (1993)

Other
 Oddities (1998) (re-release 2008) - compilation
 Selected Scenes from the End of the World: 9119 (2019) - first album remix
 Live from Isolation (2020) - live
 Oddities Too (2022) - compilation

Videography
 Innocence Lost... (1993), then re-released in 1998 with 2 new songs and extra footage

References

External links

 Official website

Musical groups from Los Angeles
American death rock groups
American gothic rock groups
American dark wave musical groups
Musical groups established in 1990
Metropolis Records artists
Trisol Music Group artists

London After Midnight (band)


The 50 Cent Party, also known as the 50 Cent Army or  (), are Internet commenters who are paid by the authorities of the People's Republic of China to spread the propaganda of the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It was created during the early phases of the Internet's rollout to the wider public in China.

The name is derived from the fact that such commenters are reportedly paid RMB¥0.50 for every post. These commenters create comments or articles on popular Chinese social media networks that are intended to derail discussions which are critical of the CCP, promoting narratives that serve the government's interests and insulting or spreading misinformation about political opponents of the Chinese government, both domestic and abroad. Some of these commenters have labeled themselves  (, short for , , ), claiming they are not paid by authorities and express their support for the Chinese government out of their own volition.

Authors of a paper published in 2017 in the American Political Science Review estimate that the Chinese government fabricates 488 million social media posts per year. In contrast to common assumptions, the 50 Cent Party consists mostly of paid bureaucrats who respond to government directives and rarely defend their government from criticism or engage in direct arguments because "... the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to distract the public and change the subject." Around 80 percent of the analysed posts involve pro-China cheerleading with inspirational slogans, and 13 percent involve general praise and suggestions on governmental policies. Despite the common allegation of the commenters getting paid for their posts, the paper suggested there was "no evidence" that they are paid anything for their posts, instead being required to do so as a part of their official party duties.

Research by professors at Harvard, Stanford, and UC San Diego indicated a "massive secretive operation" to fill China's Internet with propaganda, and has resulted in some 488 million posts written by fake social media accounts, representing about 0.6 percent of the 80 billion posts generated on Chinese social media. To maximize their influence, such pro-government comments are made largely during times of intense online debate, and when online protests have a possibility of transforming into real life actions. The colloquial term  has also been used by some English speakers outside of China as an insult against people with perceived pro-CCP bias.

History

In October 2004, the local CCP Propaganda Department of Changsha started hiring Internet commenters, in one of the earliest known uses of professional Internet commenters.

In March 2005, the Ministry of Education enacted a systematic censorship of Chinese college bulletin board systems. The popular "Little Lily" BBS, run by Nanjing University, was forced to close. As a new system was prepared to be launched, school officials hired students as part-time web commenters, paid from the university's work-study funds, to search the forum for undesirable information and actively counter it with Party-friendly viewpoints. In the following months, party leaders from Jiangsu began hiring their own teams. By mid-2007, web commenter teams recruited by schools, and party organizations were common across China. Shanghai Normal University employed undergraduates to monitor for signs of dissent and post on university forums. These commenters not only operate within political discussions, but also in general discussions. Afterwards, some schools and local governments also started to build similar teams.

On 23 January 2007, Chinese leader Hu Jintao demanded a "reinforcement of ideological and public opinion front construction and positive publicity" at the 38th collective learning of Politburo. Large Chinese websites and local governments have been requested to publish the sayings of Hu, and select "comrades with good political quality" to form "teams of Internet commenters" by the CCP Central Committee () and General Office of the State Council ().

Negative reporting of local authorities has increased on the Internet since then. In one instance described on the China Digital Times, the Jiaozuo (Henan) City Public Security Bureau established a mechanism to analyse public opinion after criticism of the police handling of a traffic incident appeared on the Internet. The Bureau responded with 120 staff calling for the truth to be revealed in line with the public opinion, which gradually shifted and eventually supported the police position, denouncing the original poster. In the aftermath of the 2008 Guizhou riot, Internet forums were filled with posts critical of the local authorities; the China News Weekly later reported that "the major task of the propaganda group was to organize commenters to past [sic] posts on websites to guide online public opinions."

In 2010, the Shanghai Communist Youth League's official website published a summary, saying that there were more than 200 topics by Shanghai Municipal Authorities' Internet commenters posted at People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency, Eastday (), Sina and Tianya after many incidents in 2009, including the Lotus Riverside incident, the forced installation of Green Dam Youth Escort software, the Putuo Urban Administrative incident, the control of H1N1, the Shanghai entrapment incident (), the self-immolation of Pan Rong (), etc. It was praised by the Shanghai Internet Publicity Office.

In December 2014, a Chinese blogger hacked into and published email archives for the Internet Propaganda Department of Zhanggong District in Ganzhou, including over 2,700 emails of 50 Cent Party Internet commenters. For instance, on 16 January 2014, Shi Wenqing, secretary of the Ganzhou branch of the CCP, held a televised "Internet exchange" in which he answered questions from a local news website forum; 50 Cent Party commenters were instructed to post seven discussion points, such as (translated) "I really admire Party Secretary Shi, what a capable and effective Party Secretary! I hope he can be the father of Ganzhou for years to come."

Range of operation
The Ministry of Culture now holds regular training sessions, where participants are required to pass an exam after which they are issued a job certification. As of 2008, the total number of 50-cent operatives was estimated to be in the tens of thousands, and possibly as high as 280,000–300,000. Every large Chinese website is instructed by the Information Office to create a trained team of Internet commenters.

According to the Chinese Communists' opinions of the recruitment of university Work Committee (tentative), the university Internet commenters are mainly selected from cadres or student cadres at the local CCP Publicity Department of universities, Youth League, Office of Academic Affairs, Network Center, Admissions Employment Department, Political Theory Department, Teaching Department and other units.

The court of Qinghe District, Huai'an organized a team of 12 commenters. Gansu Province hired 650 commenters, sorted by their writing abilities. Suqian Municipal Publicity Department's first 26 commenters' team were reported by Yangtse Evening Post in April 2005. According to high-profile independent Chinese blogger Li Ming, the pro-Chinese government web commenters must number "at least in the tens of thousands".

A 2016 Harvard study estimated that the group posts about 488 million social media comments per year.

According to an article published by Xiao Qiang on his website China Digital Times, a leaked propaganda directive, sent to 50 Cent Party Internet commenters, stated their objective was the following:
In order to circumscribe the influence of Taiwanese democracy, in order to progress further in the work of guiding public opinion, and in accordance with the requirements established by higher authorities to "be strategic, be skilled," we hope that internet commenters conscientiously study the mindset of netizens, grasp international developments, and better perform the work of being an internet commenter. For this purpose, this notice is promulgated as set forth below:

(1) To the extent possible make America the target of criticism. Play down the existence of Taiwan.
(2) Do not directly confront [the idea of] democracy; rather, frame the argument in terms of "what kind of system can truly implement democracy."
(3) To the extent possible, choose various examples in Western countries of violence and unreasonable circumstances to explain how democracy is not well-suited to capitalism.
(4) Use America's and other countries' interference in international affairs to explain how Western democracy is actually an invasion of other countries and [how the West] is forcibly pushing [on other countries] Western values.
(5) Use the bloody and tear-stained history of a [once] weak people [i.e., China] to stir up pro-Party and patriotic emotions.
(6) Increase the exposure that positive developments inside China receive; further accommodate the work of maintaining [social] stability.

Terms
There is an alternate official term for the Internet commenter, as well as several unofficial terms coined by netizens for them:

Among those names, "50 Cent Party" () was the most common and pejorative unofficial term.

The term is applied by Chinese netizens to any person who blatantly expresses pro-CCP thoughts online.

According to Foreign Policy, Chinese cyberspace is also noted for its ideological contests between "rightists" – reformists who advocate Western-style democratic reforms, versus "leftists" – conservatives and neo-Confucianists who advocate Chinese nationalism and restructured socialism. In this backdrop, rightists sometimes refer to leftists derogatorily as "50 Centers", regardless of their actual employment background.

The Hong Kong-based Apple Daily reported that although a search for "" ("50 Cent Party" in Chinese) on a search engine produces results, most were inaccessible and had been deleted.

Effects and opinions
The 50 Cent Party's activities were described by CCP general secretary and Chinese president Hu Jintao as "a new pattern of public-opinion guidance"; they represent a shift from simply erasing dissenting opinions to guiding dialogue. In 2010, a contributor to The Huffington Post stated that some comments she received on one of her posts were from the 50 Cent Party; she also stated that the 50 Cent Party monitors popular US websites, news sites and blogs and posts comments that advance Chinese governmental interests.

David Wertime of Foreign Policy argued that the narrative where a large army of paid Internet commenters are behind China's poor public dialogue with its critics is "Orwellian, yet strangely comforting". Rather, many of the Chinese netizens spreading nationalist sentiment online are not paid, but often mean what they say.

The colloquial term wumao, from the Chinese pronunciation of the term, has been used as an insult by some English speakers against people with perceived pro-CCP or pro-Chinese views, and has been cited in discussions of Sinophobia. An analyst at the Wilson Center has noted that ethnic Chinese are more likely to be called wumao than other groups of people in the English-speaking world; she attributed some of this to racism. In Australia, the term has been used as an insult amidst the rise of anti-Asian and anti-Chinese sentiments and the ongoing debate over increasing "Chinese influence" in the country.

Counter measures
Facebook and Twitter have been removing accounts and pages that are of "coordinated state-backed operation". In June 2020, Twitter has removed 170,000 accounts which targeted 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests.

See also

In China
 Internet censorship in China
 Internet water army, private astroturfing from paid Chinese writers paralleling the 50 Cent Party
 Great Firewall, a Chinese system to censor and regulate the Internet
 Little Pink, Chinese nationalist netizens
 PLA Unit 61398, the hacking and malware implantation unit of the People's Liberation Army

Elsewhere
 Astroturfing, a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement
 State-sponsored Internet propaganda, a list of other similar programs internationally
 U.S. government edits of Wikipedia
 Operation Earnest Voice, U.S. government program aimed at spreading pro-U.S. propaganda on websites frequented in the Middle East
 Russian web brigades, Russian state-sponsored propaganda trolls
 Internet Research Agency, a Russian-owned company engaged in online influence operations
 AK Trolls, Turkish state-sponsored propaganda trolls
 Public opinion brigades, state-sponsored propaganda party working for the Communist Party of Vietnam
 Force 47, Vietnamese military unit that disseminates pro-regime propaganda and hacks anti-government websites
 NAFO, pro-Ukrainian social media group active mostly on Twitter
 Vatniks, internet slang for followers of Russian propaganda

References

Further reading
  - PDF
  (Article PDF, supplementary appendix, and symposium info)

External links

 Articles related to the 50 Cent Party on China Digital Times

Chinese Internet slang
Disinformation operations
Internet censorship in China
Internet manipulation and propaganda
Internet trolling
Political pejoratives
Propaganda in China
Propaganda techniques
Public relations techniques

50 Cent Party


City Presbyterian Church (originally Park Congregational Church and later Pilgrim Congregational Church) is the name of a church located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States.  The current congregation has no direct connection to the one which originally occupied the building.  The building sits on a lot bound by 13th Street and Classen Drive, and therefore has two different street addresses.  The "front" (main entrance) of the church is at 1433 Classen Drive, but the address listed on church literature and used for mail delivery is 829 NW 13th Street.   The congregation, which informally calls itself "City Pres," is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America.

Building history
Originally called Park Congregational Church, the church was designed by the Oklahoma City architectural firm Hawk & Parr and built in 1920, of red brick and limestone in Late Gothic Revival style.   The name of the congregation was changed to Pilgrim Congregational Church soon after, and the building was known by this name for most of its history.

During its heyday the church was the place of worship for many of Oklahoma City's civic leaders, including The Oklahoman'''s publisher E.K. Gaylord.  From 1924 to 1935 the church was led by Frank Milton Sheldon, who wrote a number of religious texts, later became the minister at Milwaukee's NRHP-listed Grand Avenue Congregational Church, and was described by the Milwaukee Journal'' as "one of America's best known ministers".

The congregation was later absorbed into Oklahoma City's Mayflower Community Church, a member of the United Church of Christ, and sold the property to a local architect in the late 1970s.  The architect used part of the property for offices while renting out the main worship space for religious functions, then attempted unsuccessfully to convert part of the space to residential use before selling it in 1989.  The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, but fell into disrepair under subsequent ownership.  In 2000 the building was purchased by a pair of doctors, who later announced plans to convert it into a health spa. They added an indoor swimming pool and other facilities, but the spa project was unsuccessful.  The building was offered for sale by auction in June 2011, but failed to sell.

Congregation history
City Presbyterian Church, founded by Doug Serven and Bobby Griffith, started with a group of about 20 people who began meeting in a private home in Norman, Oklahoma in the summer of 2011, with the goal of planting a PCA church in downtown Oklahoma City. That fall and winter they held a few worship services, started small group meetings throughout the city, and held social events and service projects in an effort to reach out to the Oklahoma City community.  City Presbyterian held its first worship service on January 15, 2012. From January 2012 through March 2014 it met in space which was rented or borrowed from various churches in downtown Oklahoma City.

On September 8, 2013, City Presbyterian Church announced that it had entered into an agreement to purchase the building formerly belonging to Pilgrim Congregational Church. The purchase was completed on November 1, 2013, and after completing renovations the church held a "grand opening" of the building on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2014.  On Pentecost Sunday, June 8, 2014, City Presbyterian Church officially transitioned from a mission church to a self-governing congregation within the Presbyterian Church in America.

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma

References

External links
  City Presbyterian Church
 National Register listings for Oklahoma County

Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Oklahoma
Presbyterian Church in America churches in Oklahoma
Churches in Oklahoma City
National Register of Historic Places in Oklahoma City

City Presbyterian Church


Sâncrăieni ( or colloquially Szentkirály, Hungarian pronunciation: , , both meaning "holy king" and referring to King St Stephen of Hungary) is a commune in Harghita County, Romania. Composed of a single village, Sâncrăieni, it lies in the Székely Land, an ethno-cultural region in eastern Transylvania. The former Romanian name was Ciuc-Sâncraiu.

Geography
The village is situated on the two banks of the Olt River at the northernmost end of the Lower Ciuc Basin 7 km from Miercurea Ciuc. It lies just in front of the Jigod pass which divides the Ciuc basin into its upper and lower part. The village is bounded by the foothills of the Ciuc Mountains in the east and by the Harghita range in the west.

Demographics

The commune has an absolute Székely Hungarian majority. According to the 2002 census it had a population of 6,194 of which 98.13% or 6,078 were Hungarian. In Sâncrăieni proper, the 2002 census reported a population of 2478, with 97.41% of the respondents (2414 persons) being Hungarians.

As to religion, 97.48% of the respondents was reported to be Roman Catholic, 1.1% Reformed Protestant and 0.98% Eastern Orthodox.

The commune is composed of a single village, Sâncrăieni.
 Since 2004 Leliceni forms an independent commune with the villages of Fitod (Fitód), Hosasău (Hosszúaszó) and Misentea (Csíkmindszent).
 Since 2004 Sântimbru has formed an independent commune with the village and resort of Sântimbru-Băi (Szentimrefürdő).

History

The area of the village has been inhabited since ancient times. Excavations revealed finds from the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. In 1954, in a nearby andesite mine a Dacian silver treasure and a drinking set was found. In the Sütőkert diggings revealed traces of a settlement from the era of the Árpád dynasty.

In the papal tithe register of 1332-1337, the village was mentioned by the name of Sanctus Rex as a settlement having a parish.
However, the village is thought to be much older as naming villages as 'Holy King' was practiced in the Kingdom of Hungary only between 1083, the year of the canonizations of Stephen I of Hungary, and 1192 when another king, king St Ladislaus was also canonised. Given that, Hungary had already two holy kings, so this naming practice was abandoned as it could lead to ambiguity.

In 1566, the village was mentioned in Hungarian as Zent Kyraly, in 1614 as Szentkirály. In 1760–2, its name was recorded as Csik Szent Királly. Its Romanian name derives from the Hungarian and was originally Ciuc-Sâncraiu.

The settlement was historically part of the Székely Land area of Transylvania and administratively belonged to Csíkszék district until the administrative reform of Transylvania in 1876, when it fell within Csík County in the Kingdom of Hungary. Between 1762 and 1851, the village provided recruits for the 3rd Company of the First Székely Infantry Regiment. After the Treaty of Trianon of 1920, it became part of Romania and fell within Ciuc County during the interwar period. In 1940, the second Vienna Award granted the Northern Transylvania to Hungary and it was held by Hungary until 1944. After Soviet occupation, the Romanian administration returned and the town became officially part of Romania in 1947. Between 1952 and 1960, the commune fell within the Magyar Autonomous Region, between 1960 and 1968 the Mureș-Magyar Autonomous Region. In 1968, the province was abolished, and since then, the commune has been part of Harghita County.

The famous Hungarian noble family, the Counts Andrássy de Csíkszentkirály et Krasznahorka originated in the village.

Landmarks
The Roman Catholic parish church was built in the second half of the 15th century onto foundations from the Romanesque period . Between 1759 and 1773, it was extended and the tower was heightened. In 1790, a hall and, finally, in 1900 as side chapel was added.
In the cemetery located  south of the village stands a cemetery chapel built in 1528, altered in 1822 and in 1866.
On the Háromtetej hill which rises above a narrow valley of the Olt River, the ruines of the ancient castle of the Andrássy family can be seen,
 The village is unusually rich in mineral water springs. There are  mineral water springs in the garden of not less than 21 homes. The mineral water is bottled in three plants. The best known is Perla Harghitei, or "The Pearl of Harghita".
 'Borsáros' natural reserve. The gushing mineral water created a marshy area next to bridge of the Olt River.
 The local Ethnographic Museum

Notable people
Natives of the village are:

 Vilmos Albert (1886–1971): teacher, writer
 András Kristó (1930–1994): geologist
 Ferenc Lestyán (1913–2008) ecclesiastical writer
 Mózes Lestyán (1720–1774): ecclesiastical writer
 József Mártonfi (1746–1815): Roman Catholic bishop of Transylvania, ecclesiastical writer.
 András Nagy (1905–1981): columnist
 Éva Ruszuly (1981 -): actress
 Jukundián Simon (1813–1894): Franciscan friar, composer
 Vilmos Tánczos (1959 - ): ethnographer
 Mózes Vitos, (1847–1902): pastor, local historian

Twinnings
The village is twinned with

 Bárdudvarnok, Hungary
 Berekfürdő, Hungary
 Igal, Hungary
 Zalakomár, Hungary
 Krásnohorské Podhradie, Slovakia

References

External links
Report about the village on Duna TV

Székely communities
Communes in Harghita County
Localities in Transylvania
Andrássy family

Sâncrăieni


Charles Chips is an American maker of snack foods, especially potato chips.  It was known for home and office delivery of its products in distinctive tins.

They were known for their signature sales slogan, "Chippin' it!".

History
The company was started in 1942 when Effie Musser sold her potato chips through a distributor, who put them in distinctive tins, and named them Charles Chips after Charles Street in Baltimore.  Effie and her husband soon took over the business and by 1946, moved production to a professional kitchen.  They started offering home delivery of their chips, and added pretzels and cookies.

In 1974, the business model of home delivery became more challenging. The company made a strategic move to develop retail packaging and market their products into grocery and convenience stores. In 1979, Charles Chips began distribution into the California market from the Calhoun, KY plant.

In 1984, Charles Chips completed construction of a state-of-the-art pretzel and corn based snack production facility in Mountville, PA.

In 1990, the company had wholesale revenue in excess of $45 million. In 1991, the Mussers sold Charles Chips to a group of investors from Philadelphia. This new company went bankrupt 18 months later.

In 1993, Charles Chips was acquired by a popcorn company from Tampa, FL. They too went bankrupt about 18 months later.

In 1996, Hillside Snacks in North Arlington, NJ acquired the Charles Chips trademark and started marketing Charles Chips under a different recipe.

In early 2011, the Scardino family bought the brand, with plans to bring back the original recipes and the tins.  They now sell chips, pretzels, and cookies from their website.

References
"Snack company passed through a number of owners: Charles Chips struggled against fierce competition" from The Morning Call
"The Great Potato Chip Debate" and "Charles Chips on Comeback Trail" from Lancaster New Era
"Chips Co. Still Delivers" from The Harlan Daily Enterprise
"Tampa company to buy Charles Chips" from St. Petersburg Times
"It's crunch time for Charles Chips - New owners say successful turnaround has a way to go " from Intelligencer Journal
 "The Crunchy Sound of Nostalgia" from South Florida Business Journal.

Food and drink companies of the United States
Brand name snack foods

Charles Chips


Elia Wilkinson Peattie (January 15, 1862 – July 12, 1935) was an American author, journalist and critic.

Biography
Elia Wilkinson was the daughter of Frederick and Amanda (Cahill) Wilkinson. She was born on January 15, 1862, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but moved with her family to Chicago when she was young. She stopped attending school when she was fourteen, but kept up a reading habit. In 1883 she married Robert Burns Peattie, a Chicago journalist.

She began writing short stories for newspapers, and in 1886 became a reporter with the Chicago Tribune and subsequently the Chicago Daily News. In 1888 the family moved to Omaha after Peattie and her husband accepted jobs at the Omaha Daily Herald. When Gilbert Hitchcock bought the Daily Herald and combined it into the Omaha World-Herald Peattie became chief editorial writer for the paper. Peattie wrote over 800 columns, editorials, and stories in the World-Herald offering a voice to frontier women. Peattie did not limit her articles to societal pieces and was active in political discourse. A supporter of orphanages, charity hospitals, and the need for shelters she also took a hard line and was outspoken in her opposition of  capital punishment, lynching, and the Wounded Knee Massacre.

She wrote for magazines including Century, Lippincott's Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine, St. Nicholas, Wide Awake, The American Magazine, America, Harper's Weekly, and San Francisco Argonaut. In these stories Peattie presented hope and refused to bend to Modernism and its disillusioned outlook on life.

In 1888 she was commissioned by Chicago publishers to write a young people's history of the United States, and wrote the seven-hundred page The Story of America in four months. Her novel The Judge won a $900 prize from the Detroit Free Press in 1889, and was subsequently published in book form. Later in 1889 the Northern Pacific Railroad employed her to visit and report on Alaska: A Trip through Wonderland became a popular guide-book. With Scrip and Staff (1891) was a story of the children's crusade. Some time after 1890, Peattie befriended fellow writer Kate McPhelim Cleary while both were living in Nebraska. The two bonded over their financial, health, and family concerns.

Peattie subsequently returned to Chicago and became literary editor of the Chicago Tribune. Some time during her period in Illinois, she was a member of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony in Ogle County. One of her sons was the famed botanist, naturalist and author Donald Culross Peattie.

Works
The Story of America (1889)
The Judge (1889)
A Trip Through Wonderland (1889)
With Scrip and Staff (1891)
The American Peasant: A Timely Allegory (1892)
The Pictorial Story of America (1895)
The Edge of Things (1903)
Castle, Knight & Troubadour: In an Apology and Three Tableaux (1903)
Ickery Ann: And Other Girls and Boys (1907)
Annie Laurie and Azalea (1913)
Azalea at Sunset Gap (1914)
Lotta Embury's Career (1915)
Azalea's Silver Web (1915)
Sarah Brewster's Relatives (1916)
The Newcomers (1917)
Times and Manner: A Pageant (1918)
Songs from a Southern Garden (1930)

References

External links

Elia W. Peattie, an Uncommon Writer, an Uncommon Woman

1862 births
1935 deaths
American women journalists
Chicago Daily News people
Journalists from Nebraska
Newspaper people from Omaha, Nebraska
Chicago Tribune people

Elia W. Peattie


Moquette is a type of woven pile fabric in which cut or uncut threads form a short dense cut or loop pile. The pile's upright fibres form a flexible, durable, non-rigid surface with a distinctive velvet-like feel. Traditional moquette weave fabrics are made today from a wool nylon face with an interwoven cotton backing, and are ideally suited to applications such as public transport.

Origin
Moquette originated in France, where it was woven by hand.  Named after the French word for carpet, its standard width was a Flemish ell of 27 inches. There were two finishes: moquette velouté, which had a cut pile like English Wilton carpet, and moquette bouclé, which had an uncut pile like Brussels carpet. It is still woven in Yorkshire using traditional techniques.

Uses

In clothing
Moquette is occasionally used in clothing. In 1932–33, the United States Army Air Corps contracted for cold-weather leather flight suits lined with moquette, apparently as an economy substitute for sheepskin.

In public transportation

Due to its durability, moquette is used as public transit seat coverings in many countries. Because it was relatively cheap to produce and readily available, the fabric began to be used in London in the 1920s.  It is still used a century later,
particularly to upholster the seats of London Underground's Tube trains. Such seat covers may be designed with intricate bright colored patterns to conceal wear. These may reflect local culture and history, such as "Barman" or "Landmark" designed in 2010 for London public transportation seat coverings that depict local landmarks.

See also
Mockado

References

External links
 Gallery of moquettes used by London transport

Woven fabrics

Moquette


Travis David Tomko (born March 23, 1973) is an American personal trainer and retired professional wrestler. He is best known for his appearances with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) from 2003 to 2006 under the ring name Tyson Tomko, with New Japan Pro-Wrestling from 2006 to 2008 under his real name, and with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) between 2006 and 2010 under the ring name Tomko. Championships held by Tomko include the IWGP Tag Team Championship and TNA World Tag Team Championship.

Professional wrestling career

World Wrestling Federation / World Wrestling Entertainment (2002–2006)

Ohio Valley Wrestling (2002–2003)
Tomko was signed to a World Wrestling Federation (WWF) developmental contract in April 2002 and assigned to Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) to sharpen his skills. While in OVW he was a member of the Disciples of Synn stable and along with stablemate Seven captured the OVW Southern Tag Team Championship, on March 5, 2003, though they lost them less than a month later to the Acolytes Protection Agency (APA).

Raw (2003–2003)
In July 2003, Tomko began working dark matches for the Raw brand. He made his television debut on the April 19, 2004, Raw, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, interfering in a Christian versus Chris Jericho match on Christian's behalf and helping him pick up the win. His gimmick was that of "The Problem Solver", and acting as an "enforcer for hire" for Christian and his kayfabe girlfriend Trish Stratus in their feud with Chris Jericho. His singles matches were few and far between; his main goal was ensuring victory for his clients, usually by interfering. When Christian suffered a legit back injury, Tomko continued to stand by Stratus and aid her in gaining an advantage in feuds against Jericho, Victoria, and Steven Richards, among others. The duo occasionally paired together for mixed tag team matches. Upon Christian's return, Tomko immediately paired with him again, filling the same role as before. Following the on-screen split between Stratus and Christian (their dispute was seemingly over Tomko's services), Tomko remained Christian's enforcer. The duo also wrestled as a tag team on occasion, sometimes aligning themselves with Christian's former tag team partner and real-life friend Edge. In June 2005, Tomko, Christian, and Edge joined forces with Eric Bischoff in his crusade against Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW).

Tomko and Christian were separated on June 2005 when Christian was drafted to SmackDown!. Now on his own, Tomko was pushed as a "monster heel", winning singles matches against many jobbers by (kayfabe) knock out after hitting a big boot to the back of the head. On Raw, he knocked out both World Tag Team Champions, The Hurricane and Rosey. His winning streak ended after he was pinned by John Cena on Raw two weeks in a row. Tomko then went on to form a tag team with Snitsky, however, they were not given much of a push.

On April 3, 2006, Tomko quit WWE on good terms. He then began to work in Japan.

New Japan Pro-Wrestling (2006–2008)
Tomko debuted in New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) on July 1, 2006, participating in an eight-man tag match which he won. A few days later, Tomko and Giant Bernard took part in a tournament to determine the interim IWGP Tag Team Champions and reached the finals before losing to Shiro Koshinaka and Togi Makabe. Tomko participated in a tournament for the vacant IWGP Heavyweight Championship, which had been vacated by Brock Lesnar, and lost in the first round to Yuji Nagata. He also participated in G1 Tag League 2006 in block B with Giant Bernard and reached the semi-final before losing to the eventual winners, Masahiro Chono and Shinsuke Nakamura.

At Wrestle Kingdom in Tokyo Dome, Tomko teamed up with D'Lo Brown and Buchanan to take on Tomohiro Ishii, Togi Makabe and Toru Yano, Makabe pinned Buchanan. Tomko lost to Togi Makabe in the first round of the New Japan Cup 2007. On March 11, 2007, Tomko and Giant Bernard defeated Manabu Nakanishi and Takao Omori to win the IWGP Tag Team Championship.  Tomko and Bernard joined Masahiro Chono's BLACK faction and would eventually defect to RISE. The pair won G1 Tag League 2007 by defeating Hiroshi Tanahashi and Koji Kanemoto.

At Wrestle Kingdom in Tokyo Dome II, Tomko and Bernard defeated The Steiner Brothers. They lost the titles on February 2, 2008, to Great Bash Heel members Togi Makabe and Toru Yano. Tomko was released early in March 2008 after NJPW decided not to renew his contract. NJPW were struggling financially and could not afford to keep him going. They did however, re-sign his tag team partner Giant Bernard.

Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (2006–2008)

Christian's Coalition (2006–2007)

On the November 23, 2006 episode of TNA Impact!, Tomko made his debut in a run-in during a NWA World Heavyweight Championship number one contender's match between Christian Cage and Sting, attacking Sting and siding with Cage, once again acting as Christian's enforcer. On the January 11, 2007 episode of Impact!, Tomko went one on one against NWA World Heavyweight Champion Abyss in a non-title match. To avoid interference, Jim Cornette locked Christian in a cage, and also had Kurt Angle at ringside. During the bout, Angle got into a brawl with Samoa Joe, leaving Cage to escape the cage and interfere in the match, causing a disqualification. On the March 1 edition of Impact! he beat Samoa Joe for a chance for an NWA title shot against Cage.

On the March 8 edition of Impact!, Christian's Coalition lost to Kurt Angle, Rhino and Samoa Joe by disqualification after interference from Abyss who Black Hole slammed Angle. At Destination X, while getting out of the limo onto the black and blue carpet, Christian Cage received a telegram from Tomko stating that Tomko was in Japan and would come back if Cage would give him a title shot. Once Tomko returned from Japan, Cage offered Tomko a spot on Team Cage at Lockdown, but Tomko said he would not choose a team until he got a title shot at the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. It ended up being that Jim Cornette came out and said that the main event on Impact! that night would be one member from Team Cage fighting one member from Team Angle. Whichever team member won, Tomko would go to the team the member was from. It would be Abyss from Team Cage fighting Kurt Angle from Team Angle. In the end, Kurt Angle won by pinfall, but after the match, Tomko signed on to Team Cage instead of Team Angle, making him the final member of Team Cage to fight Team Angle at Lockdown along with Abyss, A.J. Styles, Scott Steiner, and Christian Cage. A match was held to see who would go into the cage first. It would be a match between Samoa Joe and Styles, Jeff Jarrett interfered to become the fifth member of team Angle. Tomko entered that match as the third member, and was successful, until being gored through the cage door. In the end Jeff Jarrett hit Abyss with a guitar full of tacks, and Sting got the pin.

On the following episode of Impact!, Tomko took part in Team Cage's attack on Abyss for being a liability to the team's success after Abyss and Cage failed to win the NWA World Tag Team Championship from Team 3D. One week later, Tomko and Scott Steiner were given a tag team title shot of their own, but failed thanks to botched interference from The Latin American Xchange (LAX). At Sacrifice, Tomko and Steiner met LAX and 3D in a three-way match for the title, but failed again.

After this loss, Rick Steiner debuted in TNA and helped Scott attack Tomko. Tomko remained in what was from then on once again known as Christian's Coalition, once again focused on aiding Cage. Some friction did set in after Cage cost Tomko his May 31, 2007 King of the Mountain qualifying match by distracting him with a chair. Tomko had been placed in the match against fellow Coalition member A.J. Styles because original contestant Jeff Jarrett no-showed (due to his wife's death). Christian was able to convince Tomko to continue on as his ally, which later came in handy as Tomko would go on to do much of the brunt work in the Coalition's feud against the returned Abyss and Sting, though he would be twice pinned by Abyss at PPV's after taking a Black Hole Slam each time. However, the Coalition finally avenged these losses with another bloody beatdown of Abyss which also featured the laying-out of Sting on the July 26 Impact!.

On the PPV that followed, Hard Justice, Tomko, along with Styles and Christian, had taken part in a "Doomsday Chamber of Blood Match", which Abyss picked a week after winning the contract to make it. The match was a barbed-wire six sides of steel cage match in which the objective was to make an opponent bleed and pin that opponent. The Coalition was able to lock Sting out for a while, but after he appeared in the ring, Tomko would be the first man busted open. After a long match, Christian would escape the cage, and Styles was pinned by Abyss.

Teaming with Styles (2007)

At No Surrender he and Styles won a 10-tag team gauntlet match to win title shots at Bound For Glory. At Bound for Glory on October 14, A.J. Styles and Tomko won the TNA World Tag Team Championship from Team Pacman.

Styles and Tomko defeated LAX on the November 1 edition of Impact! to retain the TNA Tag Team title. Styles and Tomko's success led to some uncertainty within the Coalition, causing Tomko to ask Christian what the chain of command was. Christian said that when he wasn't around, it was Styles - disappointing Tomko. AJ would go on to make some foolish decisions without Tomko's advice or help, starting with a take-down match against Scott Steiner that night. The last major choice Styles made for the Coalition was to join forces with Kurt Angle, forming the Angle Alliance at Genesis by assisting Angle in retaining his TNA World Heavyweight Championship. This plan quickly fell apart, as Christian and Angles could not cooperate, leaving them to fight over Styles and Tomko. The tension between Christian and Kurt would make Styles doubt himself, and he'd often turn to Tomko for advice, which Tomko would not give, telling Styles that he got into this mess himself since he was the one in charge. Tomko's continued distancing of himself from both groups would lead him to separate from the Alliance two weeks before Final Resolution on an episode of Impact!, stating that from now on he works for Tomko. He and A.J. Styles defeated Kevin Nash and Samoa Joe to retain the TNA World Tag Team Championship at Final Resolution. When Styles interfered on behalf of Kurt Angle to help him retain the TNA World Heavyweight Championship against Christian Cage, staying with the Angle Alliance and turning his back on Cage, Tomko was not present with him, leaving both Christian and Angle, staying true to his word.

Kurt Angle's henchman (2008)
On the January 3 Impact! clarified Tomko's new outlook. While Styles worried about Christian's wrath in Kurt Angle's dressing room, Tomko explained to him that he's on his own. The following week, in an interview, Tomko said Styles got himself into the situation - matter of fact, he created it - and that Tomko knew it was no-win, generally stayed out of it, and now is making his own decisions. That same night, Tomko had his first singles match since becoming independent against Shark Boy, who in storyline was injured, and quickly defeated him. At Against All Odds Tomko cost Christian the world title, then reluctantly aligned with Kurt Angle, following Styles' example so they could stay partners - with no intention of being a team player to the point of becoming a lapdog again. He also became frustrated with Styles constant attraction to Karen Angle, claiming it's hurting the team's focus and even exploding on Styles on an episode of Impact!.

At the 2008 Lockdown PPV, Tomko was captain of his own team in the Lethal Lockdown match, though his team lost to Team Cage after Rhino pinned James Storm. The following episode of Impact, Styles and Tomko lost the TNA Tag Team Titles to Eric Young and Kaz in controversial fashion relating to Young's alter-ego of "Super Eric". This resulted in the titles being vacated and put on the line in a tournament at Sacrifice, which was won by The Latin American Xchange. Following the tournament, Tomko returned from a storyline injury suffered in Japan, and expressed unhappiness towards Styles for participating in the tournament with Super Eric, who was responsible for their title loss in the first place. Styles, in turn, expressed frustration over having to follow others for the past months and wanted to break out on his own. Following that, Tomko wished Styles the best of luck and officially disbanded their tag team.

Tomko continued to act as Kurt Angle's henchman, notably harassing Karen Angle on the debut of her interview segment Karen's Angle on the July 31 episode of Impact!. He was then scheduled to feud with Matt Morgan but the program was cut short when Tomko parted ways with TNA in late July 2008, with reports circulating that he was unhappy with management. His final television appearance was on the August 7 edition of Impact! in an 8-man gauntlet in which he was pinned by Samoa Joe.

Tomko had planned on working regularly for the Inoki Genome Federation in Japan but they cancelled many of their upcoming shows, opening up his schedule to appear one last time with TNA on a non-contractual basis. On the September 11, 2008, edition of Impact! he appeared as the third of three challengers to Samoa Joe as a part of Kevin Nash's challenge.

Hustle (2009)
Tomko debuted in June 2009 under a mask and the ring name Arma in the Japanese wrestling promotion Hustle, where he formed a villainous tag team called "Armageddon" with fellow former WWE star René Duprée, who served as his partner Geddon. This team would disband shortly thereafter when Geddon turned face and changed his ring name back to René Bonaparte. On July 30, 2009, Bonaparte defeated Arma in Tomko's final Hustle appearance.

Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (2009–2010)
On the November 19, 2009, edition of Impact! Tomko officially returned to Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in an interview with Lauren, seemingly as a face. He made his in-ring return on the December 17 edition of Impact!, where he, A.J. Styles, Kurt Angle, Abyss and Bobby Lashley defeated Scott Steiner, Doug Williams, Brutus Magnus, Dr. Stevie and Raven. On the January 14 edition of Impact! Tomko turned heel as he was revealed as the man who had attacked Styles multiple times during the past three months, successfully scoring a match for Styles' TNA World Heavyweight Championship later that night as a result. However, Styles defeated him to retain the title. On the February 4 edition of Impact!, Tomko lost to Kurt Angle in an 8 Card Stud Tournament Qualifying match. On  the March 4 edition of Impact!, Tomko lost to Jeff Jarrett. On the March 22 edition of Impact!, Tomko was defeated by Rob Terry in a match for the TNA Global Championship. He was seen in a group of heels Eric Bischoff had directed to remove Abyss' mask, and on the May 13 edition of Impact!, Tomko lost to Orlando Jordan via submission which turned out to be his last match in TNA. On August 19, 2010, Tomko's profile was placed in the alumni section on TNA's official website.

Independent circuit (2013–2016)
On September 4, 2013, Tomko made his debut in Ring Warriors, where he claimed to be the next Ring Warriors Grand Champion. The following week, Tomko defeated Michael Sain. On November 2, 2013, Tomko challenged Bruce Santee for the NWA FUW Bruiserweight Championship, but the match ended in no contest. On February 1, 2014, Tomko wrestled Francisco Ciatso at the USA PRO WRESTLING 20th Anniversary Show in Orlando, Florida. Tomko won by disqualification when Ciatso introduced a chair into the match. On January 21, 2016, Tomko made a tweet on Twitter that he his returning to the ring. Tomko faced Locke and QT Santee at FHW Wrestling in Palm Beach, Florida. on January 22, 2016. On February 13, 2016, Tomko faced Tommy Vandal at Independent Championship Wrestling in Miami, Florida. On February 22, 2016, Tomko faced James "The Kid" Sabin at Florida Hardcore Wrestling and ended up in a disqualification when Sabin hit the referee with the chair.

Other media
Tomko appeared in the video games TNA iMPACT! and TNA iMPACT!: Cross The Line as a playable character, as well as having various WWE action figures produced by Jakks Pacific.

Personal life
Prior to his wrestling debut, Tomko served as a bodyguard to nu metal band Limp Bizkit. He appeared in their 2000 music video for "My Generation." Tomko owns a gym with locations in Boca Raton and Delray Beach, Florida, called Purlife Fitness Center, an organic restaurant called PurLife Cafe, and a property investment company called Coastal Properties Investment Group (Coastal P.I.G.) In Florida Keys, Florida.

Championships and accomplishments

New Japan Pro-Wrestling
IWGP Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Giant Bernard
G1 Tag League (2007) – with Giant Bernard

Nikkan Sports
Best Tag Team Award (2007) with Giant Bernard

Nu-Wrestling Evolution
NWE World Heavyweight Championship (1 time)

Ohio Valley Wrestling
OVW Southern Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Seven

Pro Wrestling Illustrated
Ranked No. 25 of the top 500 wrestlers in the PWI 500 in 2008

Total Nonstop Action Wrestling
TNA World Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with A.J. Styles
 Gauntlet for the Gold (2007 – TNA World Tag Team Championship) – with A.J. Styles

Wrestling Observer Newsletter
Worst Worked Match of the Year (2004) vs. Stevie Richards at Unforgiven

References

External links

1976 births
American male professional wrestlers
American expatriate sportspeople in Japan
Expatriate professional wrestlers in Japan
Living people
Sportspeople from Jacksonville, Florida
Professional wrestlers from Florida
TNA/Impact World Tag Team Champions
IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Champions
World Tag League (NJPW) winners

Travis Tomko


Figure could mean:

A figure is a shape, drawing or representation.
A figure in writing is any text, table or graphic separate from the main text.
A figure is a synonym for a number.
Significant figures in a decimal number.
A person's figure.
Figure of speech, also called a rhetorical figure.
Figure skating.
Figure in wood.
Miniature representation of something.
Musical figure, distinguished from musical motif.
Noise figure.
Shaping a mirror on a reflective telescope.
Figure competition is a form of physique competition for women, related to bodybuilding.  (See also: Women in bodybuilding)
Action figure

Figure


On 10 December 2008, Andrew Cunningham was murdered in his caravan in Riverside Road, Earlsfield, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. Cunningham, a 52-year-old convicted sex offender, was stabbed to death in an attack described as "frenzied" by Deputy Coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe and "sadistic" by Detective Inspector Alison Hepworth of the Homicide and Major Crime Command.

The crime remains unsolved and the Metropolitan Police offer a reward of £20,000 for information leading to the identification, arrest and prosecution of those responsible.

Background
Cunningham, a father of five, was imprisoned in 2001 for unlawful sex with a 15-year-old girl. At the time of his murder, he was working as a lorry driver and was living in a caravan outside the haulage company he worked for.

Murder
Police believe Cunningham let his killer into his caravan as there was no sign of forced entry or a struggle. Cunningham was repeatedly stabbed in the chest, throat and neck. His body was found naked with his genitals mutilated. £6,000 in cash was stolen from the caravan.

Police have identified a revenge vigilante killing as the most likely motive whilst not ruling out a robbery with the possibility the genital mutilation was a ruse.

The murder took place less than 50 metres from The Corner Pin public house on a night with a Champions League football match and a short distance from a greyhound track that was host to a race that evening. Despite that all witnesses interviewed by police reported having seen or heard no suspicious activity. This led to suggestions in The Independent that the crime was "the murder nobody wants to help solve". Detective Chief Inspector Nick Scola told the paper that "There may be people who know something but are refusing to tell us, and are using Mr Cunningham's background, the paedophile tag, to justify it to themselves". Detective Chief Inspector Scola also stated that "...even in a situation like this...taking someone's life is wrong, regardless of that person's background. I would also remind people that there is a killer still out there and a killer is a killer no matter which way you look at it."

Coroner's inquest
In November 2012, Dr Shirley Radcliffe, sitting at the Westminster Coroner's Court, ruled that Cunningham had been unlawfully killed. The inquest heard that despite interviewing 800 people police had failed to locate his killers. The court also heard allegations that Cunningham had been seen with three underage girls the day prior to his murder. Rumours had also been spread in the area that Cunningham had sexually assaulted a two-year-old girl, which police found no evidence to support.

Cunningham's sister told the inquest the area in which Cunningham was murdered was "swamped" with CCTV and she was "dubious as to why they were switched off."

References

2008 murders in the United Kingdom
2008 in London
2000s murders in London
Deaths by person in London
Deaths by stabbing in London
December 2008 crimes
December 2008 events in the United Kingdom
History of the London Borough of Wandsworth
Unsolved murders in London
Vigilantism against sex offenders

Murder of Andrew Cunningham