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Topps

The Topps Company, Inc. is an American company that manufactures trading cards and other collectibles. Formerly based in New York City, Topps is best known as a leading producer of baseball and other sports and non-sports themed trading cards. Topps also produces cards under the brand names Allen & Ginter and Bowman.

In the 2010s, Topps was the only baseball card manufacturer with a license with Major League Baseball. Following the loss of that license to Fanatics, Inc. in 2022, Fanatics acquired Topps in the same year.

Beginning and consolidation
Topps itself was founded in 1938, but the company can trace its roots back to an earlier firm, American Leaf Tobacco. Founded in 1890 by members of the Saloman family, the American Leaf Tobacco Co. imported tobacco to the United States and sold it to other tobacco companies. Eventually, in 1908, Morris Chigorinsky Shorin came in control of the company.

American Leaf Tobacco encountered difficulties during World War I, as it was cut off from Turkish supplies of tobacco, and later as a result of the Great Depression. Shorin's sons, Abram, Ira, Philip, and Joseph, decided to focus on a new product but take advantage of the company's existing distribution channels. To do this, they relaunched the company as Topps, with the name meant to indicate that it would be "tops" in its field. The chosen field was the manufacture of chewing gum.

At the time, chewing gum was still a relative novelty sold in individual pieces. Topps's most successful early product was Bazooka bubble gum, which was packaged with a small comic on the wrapper. Starting in 1950, the company decided to try increasing gum sales by packaging them together with trading cards featuring Western character Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd); at the time Boyd, as one of the biggest stars of early television, was featured in newspaper articles and on magazine covers, along with a significant amount of "Hoppy" merchandising. When Topps next introduced baseball cards as a product, the cards immediately became its primary emphasis.

The "father of the modern baseball card" was Sy Berger. In the autumn of 1951, Berger, then a 28-year-old veteran of World War II, designed the 1952 Topps baseball card set with Woody Gelman on the kitchen table of his apartment on Alabama Avenue in Brooklyn. The card design included a player's name, photo, facsimile autograph, team name and logo on the front; and the player's height, weight, bats, throws, birthplace, birthday, stats and a short biography on the back. The basic design is still in use today. Berger would work for Topps for 50 years (1947–97) and serve as a consultant for another five, becoming a well-known figure on the baseball scene, and the face of Topps to major league baseball players, whom he signed up annually and paid in merchandise, like refrigerators and carpeting.

The Shorins, in recognition of his negotiation abilities, sent Sy to London in 1964 to negotiate the rights for Topps to produce Beatles trading cards. They also tried hockey. Arriving without an appointment, Sy succeeded by speaking in Yiddish to Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager.

Berger hired a garbage boat to remove leftover boxes of 1952 baseball cards stored in their warehouse, and rode with them as a tugboat pulled them off the New Jersey shore. The cards were then dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. The cards included Mickey Mantle's first Topps card, the most valuable card of the modern era. No one at the time, of course, knew the collector's value the cards would one day attain. On August 28, 2022, the Mickey Mantle baseball card (Topps; #311; SGC MT 9.5) was sold for $12.600 million.

Incorporation
The company began its existence as Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., a partnership between the four Shorin brothers. It later incorporated under New York law in 1947. The entire company originally operated at the Bush Terminal in Brooklyn, but production facilities were moved to a plant in Duryea, Pennsylvania, in 1965 (the Duryea plant closed in 1997). Corporate offices remained at 254 36th Street in Brooklyn, a location in the waterfront district by the Gowanus Expressway. In 1994, the headquarters relocated to One Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan.

After being privately held for several decades, Topps offered stock to the public for the first time in 1972 with the assistance of investment banking firm White, Weld & Co. The company returned to private ownership when it was acquired in a leveraged buyout led by Forstmann Little & Company in 1984. The new ownership group again made Topps into a publicly traded company in 1987, now renamed to The Topps Company, Inc. In this incarnation, the company was reincorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law for legal reasons, but company headquarters remained in New York. Management was left in the hands of the Shorin family throughout all of these maneuverings.

On October 12, 2007, Topps was acquired by Michael Eisner's The Tornante Company and Madison Dearborn Partners. Under Eisner's direction, Topps began to expand into the entertainment and media business with plans for a Bazooka Joe movie. Former television executive Staci Weiss was hired as Topps's head of entertainment to develop projects based on Topps properties, including Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packages, Dinosaurs Attack!, Mech Warrior and Attax.

Topps Digital
In 2012, Topps began creating digital sports cards, starting with the Topps Bunt baseball card mobile app. After releasing Bunt in 2013 and finding success with it, they expanded their sports card market into other apps including the Kick soccer app in August 2014, Huddle Football app in April 2016, and Skate hockey app in 2017.

Along with sports cards, Topps also expanded its marketplace for collectors of digital goods to include non-sports cards on mobile devices. In March 2015, they released their Star Wars: Card Trader app, and in May 2016 they released a Walking Dead trading card app. Following the success of their assortment of digital trading card apps, they once again expanded their marketplace for digital collectors a few years later, releasing a Marvel trading card app in the spring of 2019 and their Disney trading card app in November of that same year.

In March 2020, Topps announced a collaboration with WAX.io to make their cards tradable on the blockchain. Topps has only made Garbage Pail Kids cards available to traders via blockchain but they have announced Alien Quadrilogy collectibles will be coming soon.

In April 2021, Topps announced plans to go public via a merger with Mudrick Capital Acquisition Corporation II, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Michael Eisner's firm The Tornante Company planned to roll its stake into the new company while Mudrick Capital would lead an additional investment of $250 million. The deal valued Topps at $1.3 billion. However, reports surfaced within six months of their initial plans that Mudrick Capital Management had backed out of the investment deal.

In August 2021, it was reported that Fanatics acquired future exclusive licenses with Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association to produce baseball cards. In January 2022, Fanatics announced they had acquired Topps for US$500 million.

Purchase of Merlin
Topps has a European division, which is based in Milton Keynes, UK. From this office products are launched across Europe, including Spain, France, Germany, Norway, and Italy. This division also co-ordinates products launches across the many other international markets including the Far East, Australia, and South Africa.

In 1994 Merlin acquired the Premier League license allowing the company to exclusively publish the only official Premier League sticker and album collection in the UK. The initial success of the Premier League stickers and album collection was so great that it took even Merlin by surprise, with reprint after reprint being produced.

In 1995, the Topps Company Inc. completed its takeover of Merlin Publishing. Merlin's official company name changed to Topps Europe Limited, but its products still carried the Merlin brand until 2008 as it was easily recognized by consumers.

Topps Europe Limited continues to produce a wide and varied range of sports and entertainment collectibles across Europe. Its range of products now includes stickers, albums, cards and binders, magazines, stationery, and temporary tattoos.

Topps Europe Ltd. products
Topps Europe Ltd. has continued to launch hugely successful products across Europe. Some of the most successful licenses have included WWE, Pokémon, Doctor Who, High School Musical and SpongeBob.

Topps Merlin branded Premier League sticker albums have been popular since their launch in 1994, and in 2007 Topps acquired the Premier League rights for trading cards. Previously, the trading card rights were held by Magic Box International who produced the Shoot Out cards from the 2003/04 to 2006/07 seasons. Match Attax, the official Premier League trading card game, was the biggest selling boys’ collectible in the UK three years running. Being sold across the globe in a number of countries, the collection also holds the title of the biggest selling sports collectible in the world. It is estimated that around 1.5 million children collect it in the UK alone.

Following on from the acquisition of Premier League trading cards rights, in the spring of 2008 Topps acquired the exclusive rights to the DFL Deutsche Fussball Liga GmbH for trading cards and stickers until the Bundesliga Season 2010/11. Bundesliga Match Attax was launched in January 2009 and is now available in over 40,000 stockists. The collection is the first of its kind in Germany and has become one of the biggest selling collections in the country. Now they sell alot more of football cards.

As of February 2016 Topps Match Attax dominated the secondary UK card trading market occupying two out of the top three spots on the stickerpoints.com 'most popular soccer collection' list.

In January 2023, Topps released both physical and digital trading cards for their latest partner the 24 Hours of Le Mans Motorsport event. The release is set for February 2023 and will feature art work from original race posters from 1923 to current day.

Entry into the baseball card market
In 1951, Topps produced its first baseball cards in two different sets known today as Red Backs and Blue Backs. Each set contained 52 cards, like a deck of playing cards, and in fact the cards could be used to play a game that would simulate the events of a baseball game. Also like playing cards, the cards had rounded corners and were blank on one side, which was colored either red or blue (hence the names given to these sets). The other side featured the portrait of a player within a baseball diamond in the center, and in opposite corners a picture of a baseball together with the event for that card, such as "fly out" or "single."

Topps changed its approach in 1952, this time creating a much larger (407 total) set of baseball cards and packaging them with its signature product, bubble gum. The company also decided that its playing card model was too small (2 inches by 2-5/8 inches) and changed the dimensions to 2-5/8 inches by 3-3/4 inches with square corners. The cards now had a color portrait on one side, with statistical and biographical information on the other. This set became a landmark in the baseball card industry, and today the company considers this its first true baseball card set. Many of the oil paintings for the sets were rendered by artist Gerry Dvorak, who also worked as an animator for Famous Studios. In 1957, Topps shrank the dimensions of its cards slightly, to 2-1/2 inches by 3-1/2 inches, setting a standard that remains the basic format for most sports cards produced in the United States. It was at this time Topps began to use color photographs in their set.

The cards were released in several series over the course of the baseball season, a practice Topps would continue with its baseball cards until 1974. However, the last series of each year did not sell as well, as the baseball season wore on and popular attention began to turn towards American football. Thus cards from the last series are much scarcer and are typically more valuable (even commons) than earlier series of the same year. Topps was left with a substantial amount of surplus stock in 1952, which it largely disposed of by dumping many cards into the Atlantic. In later years, Topps either printed series in smaller quantities late in the season or destroyed excess cards. As a result, cards with higher numbers from this period are rarer than low numbers in the same set, and collectors will pay significantly higher prices for them. The last series in 1952 started with card No. 311, which is Topps's first card of Mickey Mantle, and remains the most valuable Topps card ever (and, as of August 28, 2022, the most valuable trading card of all). On August 28, 2022, the Mickey Mantle baseball card (Topps; #311; SGC MT 9.5) was sold for $12.600 million. This 1952 Topps Mantle is often mistakenly referred to as Mantle's rookie card, but that honor belongs to his 1951 Bowman card (which is worth less than the 1952 Topps card).

The combination of baseball cards and bubble gum was popular among young boys, and given the mediocre quality of the gum, the cards quickly became the primary attraction. In fact, the gum eventually became a hindrance because it tended to stain the cards, thus impairing their value to collectors who wanted to keep them in pristine condition. It (along with the traditional gray cardboard) was finally dropped from baseball card packs in 1992, although Topps began its Heritage line, which included gum, in the year 2001.

Competition for player contracts
During this period, baseball card manufacturers generally obtained the rights to depict players on merchandise by signing individual players to contracts for the purpose. Topps first became active in this process through an agent called Players Enterprises in July 1950, in preparation for its first 1951 set. The later acquisition of rights to additional players allowed Topps to release its second series.

This promptly brought Topps into furious competition with Bowman Gum, another company producing baseball cards. Bowman had become the primary maker of baseball cards and driven out several competitors by signing its players to exclusive contracts. The language of these contracts focused particularly on the rights to sell cards with chewing gum, which had already been established in the 1930s as a popular product to pair with baseball cards.

To avoid the language of Bowman's existing contracts, Topps sold its 1951 cards with caramel candy instead of gum. However, because Bowman had signed many players in 1950 to contracts for that year, plus a renewal option for one year, Topps included in its own contracts the rights to sell cards with gum starting in 1952 (as it ultimately did). Topps also tried to establish exclusive rights through its contracts by having players agree not to grant similar rights to others, or renew existing contracts except where specifically noted in the contract.

Bowman responded by adding chewing gum "or confections" to the exclusivity language of its 1951 contracts, and also sued Topps in U.S. federal court. The lawsuit alleged infringement on Bowman's trademarks, unfair competition, and contractual interference. The court rejected Bowman's attempt to claim a trademark on the word "baseball" in connection with the sale of gum, and disposed of the unfair competition claim because Topps had made no attempt to pass its cards off as being made by Bowman. The contract issue proved more difficult because it turned on the dates when a given player signed contracts with each company, and whether the player's contract with one company had an exception for his contract with the other.

As the contract situation was sorted out, several Topps sets during these years had a few "missing" cards, where the numbering of the set skips several numbers because they had been assigned to players whose cards could not legally be distributed. The competition, both for consumer attention and player contracts, continued until 1956, when Topps bought out Bowman. This left Topps as the predominant producer of baseball cards for the next quarter-century.

Consolidation of a monopoly
The next company to challenge Topps was Fleer, another gum manufacturer. Fleer signed star Ted Williams to an exclusive contract in 1959 and sold a set of cards oriented around him. Williams retired the next year, so Fleer began adding around him other mostly retired players in a Baseball Greats series, which was sold with gum. Two of these sets were produced before Fleer finally tried a 67-card set of currently active players in 1963. However, Topps held onto the rights of most players and the set was not particularly successful.

Stymied, Fleer turned its efforts to supporting an administrative complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Topps was engaging in unfair competition through its aggregation of exclusive contracts. A hearing examiner ruled against Topps in 1965, but the Commission reversed this decision on appeal. The Commission concluded that because the contracts only covered the sale of cards with gum, competition was still possible by selling cards with other small, low-cost products. However, Fleer chose not to pursue such options and instead sold its remaining player contracts to Topps for $395,000 in 1966. The decision gave Topps an effective monopoly of the baseball card market.

That same year, however, Topps faced an attempt to undermine its position from the nascent players' union, the Major League Baseball Players Association. Struggling to raise funds, the MLBPA discovered that it could generate significant income by pooling the publicity rights of its members and offering companies a group license to use their images on various products. After putting players on Coca-Cola bottlecaps for $120,000, the union concluded that the Topps contracts did not pay players adequately for their rights.

MLBPA executive director Marvin Miller then approached Joel Shorin, the president of Topps, about renegotiating these contracts. At this time, Topps had every major league player under contract, generally for five years plus renewal options, so Shorin declined. After continued discussions went nowhere, the union before the 1968 season asked its members to stop signing renewals on these contracts, and offered Fleer the exclusive rights to market cards of most players (with gum) starting in 1973. Although Fleer declined the proposal, by the end of the year Topps had agreed to double its payments to each player from $125 to $250, and also to begin paying players a percentage of Topps's overall sales. The figure for individual player contracts has since increased to $500.

As a byproduct of this history, Topps continues to use individual player contracts as the basis for its baseball card sets today. This contrasts with other manufacturers, who all obtain group licenses from the MLBPA. The difference has occasionally affected whether specific players are included in particular sets. Players who decline to sign individual contracts will not have Topps cards even when the group licensing system allows other manufacturers to produce cards of the player, as happened with Alex Rodriguez early in his career. On the other hand, if a player opts out of group licensing, as Barry Bonds did in 2004, then manufacturers who depend on the MLBPA system will have no way of including him. Topps, however, can negotiate individually and was belatedly able to create a 2004 card of Bonds. In addition, Topps is the only manufacturer able to produce cards of players who worked as replacement players during the 1994 baseball strike, since they are barred from union membership and participation in the group licensing program.

The monopoly and its end
A semblance of competition returned to the baseball card market in the 1970s when Kellogg's began producing "3-D" cards and inserting them in boxes of breakfast cereal (originally Corn Flakes, later Raisin Bran and other Kellogg's brands). The Kellogg's sets contained fewer cards than Topps sets, and the cards served as an incentive to buy the cereal, rather than being the intended focus of the purchase, as tended to be the case for cards distributed with smaller items like candy or gum. Topps took no action to stop them.

The Topps monopoly on baseball cards was finally broken by a lawsuit decided by federal judge Clarence Charles Newcomer in 1980, in which the judge ended Topps Chewing Gum's exclusive right to sell baseball cards, allowing the Fleer Corporation to compete in the market. That let Fleer and another company, Donruss, enter the market in 1981. Fleer and Donruss began making large, widely distributed sets to compete directly with Topps, packaged with gum. When the ruling was overturned on appeal in August 1981, Topps appeared to have regained its monopoly, but both of its competitors instead began packaging their cards with other baseball items—logo stickers from Fleer, and cardboard puzzle pieces from Donruss. The puzzles, created by baseball artists Dick Perez for Perez Steele, included Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle and a dozen others. Other manufacturers later followed, but Topps remains one of the leading brands in the baseball card hobby. In response to the competition, Topps began regularly issuing additional "Traded" sets featuring players who had changed teams since the main set was issued, following up on an idea it had experimented with a few years earlier.

Topps in the modern baseball card industry
While "Traded" or "Update" sets were originally conceived to deal with players who changed teams, they became increasingly important for another reason. In order to fill out a 132-card set (the number of cards that fit on a single sheet of the uncut cardboard used in the production process), it would contain a number of rookie players who had just reached the major leagues and not previously appeared on a card. They also included a few single cards of players who previously appeared in the regular set on a multi-player "prospects" card; one notable example is the 1982 Topps Traded Cal Ripken Jr. Since a "rookie card" is typically the most valuable for any given player, the companies now competed to be the first to produce a card of players who might be future stars. Increasingly, they also included highly touted minor league players who had yet to play in the major leagues. For example, Topps obtained a license to produce cards featuring the U.S. Olympic baseball team and thus produced the first card of Mark McGwire prior to his promotion to the major league level, and one that would become quite valuable to collectors for a time. This card from the 1984 squad appeared in Topps's regular 1985 set, but by the next Olympic cycle the team's cards had been migrated to the "Traded" set. As a further step in this race, Topps resurrected its former competitor Bowman as a subsidiary brand in 1989, with Bowman sets similarly chosen to include a lot of young players with bright prospects.

Also beginning in 1989 with the entry of Upper Deck into the market, card companies began to develop higher-end cards using improved technology. Following Topps's example, other manufacturers now began to diversify their product lines into different sets, each catering to a different niche of the market. The initial Topps effort at producing a premium line of cards, in 1991, was called Stadium Club. Topps continued adding more sets and trying to distinguish them from each other, as did its competitors. The resulting glut of different baseball sets caused the MLBPA to take drastic measures as the market for them deteriorated. The union announced that for 2006, licenses would only be granted to Topps and Upper Deck, the number of different products would be limited, and players would not appear on cards before reaching the major leagues.

Although most of its products were distributed through retail stores and hobby shops, Topps also attempted to establish itself online, where a significant secondary market for sports cards was developing. Working in partnership with eBay, Topps launched a new brand of sports cards called eTopps in December 2000. These cards are sold exclusively online through individual "IPOs" (or, "Initial Player Offering") in which the card is offered for usually a week at the IPO price. The quantity sold depends on how many people offer to buy, but is limited to a certain maximum. After a sale, the cards are held in a climate-controlled warehouse unless the buyer requests delivery, and the cards can be traded online without changing hands except in the virtual sense.

Topps also acquired ThePit.com, a startup company that earlier in 2000 had launched a site for online stock-market style card trading. The purchase was for $5.7 million cash in August 2001 after Topps had earlier committed to invest in a round of venture capital financing for the company. This undertaking was not very successful, however, and Topps unloaded the site on Naxcom in January 2006. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed, but Topps charged a $3.7 million after-tax loss on its books in connection with the sale.

In 2002, Topps revived the T206 set originally released in 1909–11 by the American Tobacco Company under the "Topps 206" brand, with current players. That first revival included the T206 Honus Wagner iconic card, with blue background instead of the original orange. A second revival would be launched in 2010.

Topps grabbed collectors' attention early in 2007 when the new card of Yankees' shortstop Derek Jeter was found to have been altered to include an image of Mickey Mantle standing in the dugout and President George W. Bush walking through the stands.

In 2009, Topps became the first official baseball card of MLB in over thirty years. The first product to fall under the deal was the 2010 Topps Baseball Series 1. The deal gave Topps exclusivity for the use of MLB and club trademarks and logos on cards, stickers and some other products featuring major league players. The exclusive deal was extended in 2013, then extended again in 2018. It is currently scheduled to go through at least 2025.

Again in 2020, the company released a new T206 collection divided into five different series, with the first (50 cards) being released in May 2020. The collection, named "Topps 206", include players from both, Major and Minor League. The fifth series was released in September 2020.

Card design
Although Topps did not invent the concept of baseball cards, its dominance in the field basically allowed the company to define people's expectations of what a baseball card would look like. In addition to establishing a standard size, Topps developed various design elements that are considered typical of baseball cards. Some of these were the company's own innovations, such as the 1971 Football Set, while some were ideas borrowed from others that Topps helped popularize.

Use of statistics
One of the features that contributed significantly to Topps's success beginning with the 1952 set was providing player statistics. At the time, complete and reliable baseball statistics for all players were not widely available, so Topps actually compiled the information itself from published box scores. While baseball cards themselves had been around for years, including statistics was a relative novelty that fascinated many collectors. Those who played with baseball cards could study the numbers and use them as the basis for comparing players, trading cards with friends, or playing imaginary baseball games. It also had some pedagogical benefit by encouraging youngsters to take an interest in the underlying mathematics.

The cards originally had one line for statistics from the most recent year (i.e. the 1951 season for cards in the 1952 set) and another with the player's lifetime totals. Bowman promptly imitated this by putting statistics on its own cards where it had previously only had biographical information. For the first time in 1957, Topps put full year-by-year statistics for the player's entire career on the back of the card. Over the next few years, Topps alternated between this format and merely showing the past season plus career totals. The practice of showing complete career statistics became permanent in 1963, except for one year, 1971, when Topps sacrificed the full statistics in order to put a player photo on the back of the card as well.

Artwork and photography
Although the 1971 set was an aborted experiment in terms of putting photos on card backs (they would not return until 1992), that year was also a landmark in terms of baseball card photography, as Topps for the first time included cards showing color photographs from actual games. The cards themselves had been in color from the beginning, though for the first few years this was done by using artist's portraits of players rather than actual photographs and until 1971, Topps used mostly portrait or posed shots. The 1971 set is also known for its jet black borders, which because they chip so easily, makes it much more difficult to find top grade cards for 1971. The black borders would return for Topps's 1985 football set and 2007 baseball set.

After starting out with simple portraits, in 1954 Topps put two pictures on the front of the card – a hand-tinted 'color' close-up photo of the player's head, and the other a black-and-white full-length pose. The same basic format was used in 1955, this time with the full-length photo also hand-tinted. For 1956, the close-up tinted photo was placed against a tinted full-background 'game-action' photo of the player. The close-up head shots of some individual players were reused each year.

From 1957 on, virtually all cards were posed photographs, either as a head shot or together with a typical piece of equipment like a bat or glove. If using such a prop, the player might pose in a position as if he were in the act of batting, pitching, or fielding. Photographs did not appear in sharp focus and natural color until 1962. However, that year also saw problems with the print quality in the second series, which lacked the right proportion of ink and thus gave the photographs a distinctly greenish tint. The affected series of cards was then reprinted, and several players were actually shown in different poses in the reprinting. Although Topps had produced error cards and variations before, this was its largest single production glitch.

In the absence of full-color action photography, Topps still occasionally used artwork to depict action on a handful of cards. Starting in 1960 a few cards showed true game action, but the photographs were either in black-and-white or hand-tinted color; these cards were primarily highlights from the World Series. In addition to basic cards of individual players, Topps sets commonly include cards for special themes, the 1974 tribute to Hank Aaron as he was about to break Babe Ruth's career home run record being one example. The 1972 set finally included color photographs, which were used for special "In Action" cards of selected star players. Thereafter, Topps began simply mixing game photography with posed shots in its sets.

Baseball artist Dick Perez was commissioned to paint art cards for Topps beginning in 2006. His art card series include Turkey Red and Allen & Ginter.

When used for the cards of individual players, some of the early action photography had awkward results. The photos were sometimes out of focus or included several players, making it difficult to pick out the player who was supposed to be featured on the card. In a few cases, a misidentification meant that the player didn't even appear in the picture. These problems diminished as Topps's selection of photographs gradually improved.

Before statistics, biographical information, and commentary became the dominant element on the backs of cards, Topps also featured artwork there. This primarily involved using various types of cartoons drawn by its stable of artists. These appeared on card backs as late as 1982, but gradually declined in the prominence of their placement and the proportion of cards on which they appeared. In 1993, Topps finally managed again to incorporate a player photo on the back as well as the front of the card, after some competitors had been doing so for a number of years.

Coping with updated developments
The pictures and information on baseball cards sold during one season came primarily from earlier seasons, so Topps used various tactics to give its cards a greater sense of staying current with the times. Before coming up with the idea of a "Traded" set, the company still tried to produce cards of players with their new team if they changed teams in the offseason. This was sometimes accomplished by showing the player without any team cap, or by airbrushing out elements of the former team's logo on his uniform. Cards for rookies could also be prepared by airbrushing over their minor-league uniforms in photos.

In one case, Topps even got too far in front of events, as in 1974 it showed a number of players as being with the "Washington Nat'l Lea." franchise, due to expectations that the San Diego Padres would relocate to the vacant Washington, D.C., market. The team designation was the only change, as no new nickname for the franchise had been selected. When the move failed to materialize, Topps had to replace these with cards showing the players still as Padres.

On rare occasions, Topps has issued special cards for players who had either died or had been injured. The 1959 set had card 550 as "Symbol Of Courage – Roy Campanella", with a color photo of the paralyzed former Dodger in his wheelchair and a black-and-white photo of him in uniform inserted to the upper left. The 1964 set issued cards for two recently deceased players: Ken Hubbs of the Cubs with a different "In Memoriam" front design compared to standard cards, and Colts pitcher Jim Umbricht's regular card with a special note on the back about his April 1964 death from cancer. In October 2006, Topps was prepping for its annual updated/traded card release, which featured Cory Lidle in a Yankees uniform. After Lidle's tragic death, the cards were pulled and subsequently released with "In Memoriam" on its front.

American Football cards
In addition to baseball, Topps also produced cards for American football in 1951, which are known as the Magic set. For football cards Bowman dominated the field, and Topps did not try again until 1955, when it released an All-American set with a mix of active players and retired stars. After buying out Bowman, Topps took over the market the following year.

Since then, Topps sold football cards every season until 2016. However, the emergence of the American Football League (AFL) in 1960 to compete with the established National Football League also allowed Topps's competitors, beginning with Fleer, to make inroads. Fleer produced a set for the AFL in 1960, sets for both leagues for a year, and then began focusing on the AFL again. Philadelphia Gum secured the NFL rights for 1964, forcing Topps to go for the AFL and leaving Fleer with no product in either baseball or football.

Although more competitive for a time, the football card market was never as lucrative as the market for baseball cards, so the other companies did not fight as hard over it. After the AFL–NFL Merger was agreed to, Topps became the only major football card manufacturer beginning in 1968. In spite of the lack of competition, or perhaps to preempt it, Topps also created two sets of cards for the short-lived United States Football League in the 1980s. Many NFL legends had their first ever cards produced in the USFL sets. These players include Steve Young, Jim Kelly, and Reggie White. This resulted in a controversy when these players debuted in the NFL. Many wondered if the USFL cards should be considered rookie cards because the league did not exist anymore. The situation continued until growth in the sports card market generally prompted two new companies, Pro Set and Score, to start making football cards in 1989.

Throughout the 1970s until 1982, Topps did not have the rights to reproduce the actual team logos on the helmets and uniforms of the players; curiously, these could be found on the Fleer sets of the same era, but Fleer could not name specific player names (likely an issue of Topps holding the National Football League Players Association license and Fleer holding the license from the league). As a result, helmet logos for these teams were airbrushed out on a routine basis.

After the 2015 football season, Panini was awarded an exclusive license by the NFL for producing football cards. 2016 was the first year Topps did not produce football cards since 1955.

Trading cards for other sports
Topps also makes cards for other major North American professional sports. Its next venture was into ice hockey, with a 1954 set featuring players from the four National Hockey League franchises located in the U.S. at the time: the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, and New York Rangers.

In 1958, the O-Pee-Chee Company of London, Ontario, Canada, entered into an agreement with Topps to produce NHL cards (the 1957–58 series) and Canadian football cards (the 1958 series). O-Pee-Chee then started printing its own hockey and football cards in 1961. Similarly, the Topps Company struck agreements with Amalgamated and British Confectionery in the United Kingdom and Scanlen's in Australia.

In 1967, with the major expansion of six new NHL teams to the United States, the Topps Company produced a new hockey card set that paralleled the 1966–67 O-Pee-Chee hockey design (the basic television design was in fact first used for 1966 Topps American football series). Starting in 1968–69, the Topps Company started printing an annual Topps hockey set that was similar to the annual O-Pee-Chee hockey set. The Topps and O-Pee-Chee hockey sets shared a similar design from 1968–69 to 1981–82 and from 1984–85 to 1991–92.

Topps first sold cards for basketball in 1957, but stopped after one season. The company started producing basketball cards again in 1969 and continued until 1982, but then abandoned the market for another decade, missing out on printing the prized rookie cards of Michael Jordan and other mid- and late-1980s National Basketball Association stars. Topps finally returned to basketball cards in 1992, several years after its competitors. This would be perfect timing, because 1992 was the rookie year of Shaquille O'Neal.

In the United Kingdom, where football stickers have been popular over roughly the same period of time as trading cards, Topps acquired the old Amalgamated and British Confectionery firm in 1974, bringing its production methods and card style to Britain. Topps also makes cards for the Scottish Professional Football League. Under its Merlin brand, it has the licence to produce stickers for the Premier League and the national team. Its main competition is the Italian firm Panini. Until 2019, Topps made 'Topps Premier League' stickers and the Match Attax trading card game, and since 2015 it has produced stickers and trading cards for the UEFA Champions League.

In 2008, Topps gained the rights to production of WWE trading cards. The first variation of cards were aptly titled Slam Attax, a play on words of the previously popular football trading card game Match Attax (also made by Topps). The first set was released in late 2008 in the U.K., and it was then later released in the United States in mid-2009. This later proved to be a pattern for subsequent Slam Attax sets and variations, with the U.K. getting an earlier release than the U.S.. After failing to take off, Topps ceased production of Slam Attax cards in the U.S. after only two sets, whilst continuing the line in the U.K. and in Europe where in contrast the brand had become more popular. It remains today one of the longest running Topps brands in the U.K..

In 2008, Topps and Zuffa, LLC signed an exclusive agreement to produce mixed martial arts trading cards. Among the included cards were current and former athletes from the UFC.

Non-sports products
Originally, Topps was purely a gum company, and its first product was simply called "Topps gum". Other gum and candy products followed. In imitation of Bowman and other competitors, Topps eventually began producing humor products unrelated to sports. This included stickers, posters (Wanted Posters, Travel Posters), media tie-ins (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In), book covers (Batty Bookcovers) and toys (Flying Things), plus offbeat packaging (Garbage Candy). More recently, the company published comic books and games.

Candy and confectionery items
The longest-lived Topps product line remains Bazooka bubble gum, small pieces of gum in patriotic red, white, and blue packaging. Bazooka was introduced in 1947 as a bar of gum that sold for five cents. Unlike the gum sold with baseball cards, it was of better quality and capable of selling on its own merit. In 1953, Topps began selling smaller penny pieces with the Bazooka Joe comic strip on the wrapper as an added attraction.

Even though baseball cards became the company's primary focus during this period, Topps still developed a variety of candy items. For quite a few years, the company stuck within familiar confines, and virtually all of these products involved gum in some way. Sales declined significantly in the 1970s, however, when this relatively hard gum was challenged by Bubble Yum, a new, softer form of bubble gum from Life Savers.

Later, Topps added more candy items without gum. One particular focus has been lollipops, such as Ring Pops. However, Topps has noted that increasing public attention to childhood nutrition undercuts its candy sales. Under pressure by shareholders, the company considered selling off its confectionery business in 2005, but was unable to find a buyer to meet its price and decided to cut management expenses instead.

Other brands include Push Pop, Baby Bottle Pop, and Juicy Drop Pop.

Discontinued products include the Vertigo lollipop, that consisted of a creamy lollipop with a chocolate half and the Wazoo bar.

When the Topps name was sold with the trading card business and entertainment properties to Fanatics, the confectionary business was spun-off as Bazooka Brands, which remains owned by the previous owners.

Non-sports trading cards
As its sports products relied more on photography, Topps redirected its artistic efforts toward non-sports trading cards, on themes inspired by popular culture. For example, the Space Race prompted a set of Space Cards in 1958. Topps has continued to create collectible cards and stickers on a variety of subjects, often targeting the same adolescent male audience as its baseball cards. In particular, these have covered movies, television series, and other cultural phenomena ranging from the Beatles to the life story of John F. Kennedy. The many Star Wars card series have done well, with a few exceptions. Future screenwriter Gary Gerani ("Pumpkinhead') joined the company in 1972 and became the editor/writer of almost all movie and television tie-in products, most notably the numerous Star Wars sets, while also creating and helming original card properties such as 1988's Dinosaurs Attack!.

Many Topps artists came from the world of comics and continued to work in that field as well. The shift from sports to other topics better suited the creative instincts of the artists and coincided with turmoil in the comic book industry over regulation by the Comics Code Authority. Beginning at Topps when he was a teenager, Art Spiegelman was the company's main staff cartoonist for more than 20 years. Other staffers in Topps's Product Development Department at various times included Larry Riley, Mark Newgarden, Bhob Stewart and Rick Varesi. Topps's creative directors of Product Development, Woody Gelman and Len Brown, gave freelance assignments to leading comic book illustrators, such as Jack Davis, Wally Wood and Bob Powell. Spiegelman, Gelman and Brown also hired freelance artists from the underground comix movement, including Bill Griffith and Kim Deitch and Robert Crumb. Jay Lynch did extensive cartooning for Topps over several decades.

Drawing on their previous work, these artists were adept at things like mixing humor and horror, as with the Funny Monsters cards in 1959. The 1962 Mars Attacks cards, sketched by Wood and Powell and painted by Norman Saunders, later inspired a Tim Burton movie. A tie-in with the Mars Attacks film led to a 1994 card series, a new 100-card Archives set reprinting the 55 original cards, plus 45 new cards from several different artists, including Norm Saunders' daughter, Zina Saunders.

Among Topps's most notable achievements in the area of satire and parody have been Wacky Packages, a takeoff on various household consumer products, and Garbage Pail Kids, a parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. Another popular series was the Civil War News set, also with Norman Saunders' artwork.

Earlier, particularly in the early and mid-60s, Topps thrived with several successful series of parody and satire cards for a variety of occasions, usually featuring artists who also worked at Mad magazine. There were several insult-valentine card series, plus a series of insult epigram cards called Wacky Plaques, several series of well-known-product advertising parody cards, a set of cards featuring the 'mad car-driver cartoons' of artist Big Daddy Roth, and a card-sticker series of fanciful bizarre 'rejected aliens' from other planets, among other semi-subversive outrageous over-the-top concepts designed for the semi-rebellious adolescent boomer market.

Although baseball cards have been Topps's most consistently profitable item, certain fads have occasionally produced spikes in popularity for non-sports items. For a period beginning in 1973, the Wacky Packages stickers managed to outsell Topps baseball cards, becoming the first product to do so since the company's early days as purely a gum and candy maker. Pokémon cards would accomplish the same feat for a few years starting in 1999. In the absence of new fads to capitalize on, Topps has come under pressure from stock analysts, since its sports card business is more stable and has less growth potential.

In 2015 Topps started to expand its non-sports category by adding more TV shows, as well as sci-fi with its brand-new Star Wars line (expanding into its own Topps virtual card app, similar to Topps BUNT), as well as Doctor Who, with regular autographs as well as vintage cut autographs, screen-worn relics, and more.

Disney Channel
Topps worked together with the Disney Channel to create trading cards of High School Musical, High School Musical 2, High School Musical 3, and Hannah Montana.

Comic books
Drawing on its established connections with artists, in 1993 Topps created a division of the company to publish comic books. Known as Topps Comics, its early efforts included several concepts from retired industry legend Jack Kirby, known collectively as the "Kirbyverse". Topps Comics particularly specialized in licensed titles with tie-ins to movies or television series, though it also published a few original series. Its longest-running and best-selling title was The X-Files, based on the Fox TV show.

These comic books featured former Marvel Comics editor Jim Salicrup as its editor-in-chief. Apart from The X-Files, some of the more famous titles included Lone Ranger and Tonto by Timothy Truman, Xena: Warrior Princess, Mars Attacks, and Zorro, which introduced the famous comics character Lady Rawhide. With sales stagnating, the company decided to pull out of the comics business in 1998.

Games
The Topps Pokémon cards were purely for entertainment, pleasure and collecting, but a new niche of collectible card games was also developing during this period (a Pokémon trading card game was produced simultaneously by Wizards of the Coast). Topps made its first foray into the world of games in July 2003 by acquiring the game company WizKids for $29.4 million in cash, thus acquiring ownership of the rights to the well-known gaming universes of BattleTech and Shadowrun. By inventing yet another niche, the constructible strategy game Pirates of the Spanish Main, this unit managed to reach profitability. Topps shut down Wizkids operation in November 2008 due to the economic downturn. The brand was acquired by NECA in September 2009.

Controversy
In 2021, Topps was criticized for its depiction of South Korean boyband BTS in its Grammy-themed collection, which was seen as racist and violent. In response to public backlash, the company apologized and the cards were removed from its production lineup.

Major League Baseball

 * Topps All-Star Rookie Team

Minor League Baseball

 * Topps Minor League Player of the Year Award – also known as the J. G. Taylor Spink Award
 * George M. Trautman Awards – Also in conjunction with Minor League Baseball, Topps presents the George M. Trautman Awards to the Topps Player of the Year in each of sixteen domestic minor leagues.
 * Topps Short Season-A/Rookie All-Star Team

title: Topps


text:
Snowflake (gorilla)

Snowflake (Floquet de Neu, Copito de Nieve, Flocon de Neige; c. 1964 – 24 November 2003) was a western lowland gorilla who is the world's only known albino gorilla to date. He was kept at Barcelona Zoo in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, from 1966 until his death in 2003.

History
Snowflake was captured in the Río Muni region in Spanish Guinea on 1 October 1966 by ethnic Fang farmer Benito Mañé. Mañé had killed the rest of Snowflake's gorilla group (traditional in colour). Mañé then kept Snowflake at his home for four days before transporting him to Bata, where he was purchased by primatologist Jordi Sabater Pi.

Originally named Nfumu Ngui in Fang language ("white gorilla") by his captor, he was then nicknamed Floquet de Neu (Catalan for "little snowflake" ) by his keeper, Jordi Sabater Pi.

Characteristics
Snowflake was a western lowland gorilla with non-syndromic oculocutaneous albinism. He had poor vision, though tests to determine whether he had a central blind spot did not find one. Barcelona Zoo director Antonio Jonch wrote: "'The eye had a blueish sclera, a normal cornea, and a light blue iris which was very transparent to transillumination. Accommodation and refraction were normal. The media were transparent and the fundus of the eye normal and totally depigmented. The choroidal vessels were perfectly visible and the pupil was normal. The animal displayed marked photophobia, which caused it to close its eyes repeatedly when exposed to bright light. In diffuse light similar to that in its biotope, we calculated that it blinked on an average of 20 times a minute.'"

Study of Snowflake's genome determined that his parents had 12% of their DNA in common, leading researchers to believe that his parents were uncle and niece. The same study revealed that his albinism was caused by a mutation of the SLC45A2 gene. Snowflake received the recessive gene from both parents, causing his albinism.

Life in Barcelona

Upon his arrival to Barcelona in November 1966, he was given an official reception by the then-mayor of Barcelona, Josep Maria de Porcioles, and called Blancanieves ("Snow White") in the newspaper Tele/Exprés. He became famous, though, with the name given to him by Sabater when National Geographic featured him on the cover in March 1967, with the English name Snowflake. This name spread among the press (Stern, Life, Paris-Match). Sabater himself called the gorilla Copi or Floquet, and in the later years Nfumu.

Offspring
Snowflake fathered 22 offspring by three different mates, or "dams". Six of his offspring survived to adulthood. None of Snowflake's offspring were albino, but all should be heterozygous, recessive carriers, for the albino gene. Half of his grandchildren likely carry the albino gene. If both parents were albino gene carriers, they have a 25% chance of producing an albino offspring and a 50% chance that the offspring will be a carrier of the gene.

As of September 2021, Snowflake had a total of 21 grandchildren (11 survived) and eight great-grandchildren (all living). Snowflake's great-grandson N'Kou has pink fingers, which is perhaps suggestive of partial albinism.

Death
In 2001, Snowflake was diagnosed with an unusual form of skin cancer, almost certainly related to his albinism. By 2003, Snowflake's health began to deteriorate. After he began losing interest in his usual activities, isolating himself from other gorillas and exhibiting signs of pain, Snowflake's keepers decided to euthanize him. The decision was publicly announced in September 2003. Thousands of people visited Snowflake at the Barcelona Zoo before he was euthanized on 24 November 2003. At the time of his death, Snowflake was thought to be between 38 and 40 years old.

Legacy

 * The asteroid 95962 Copito, discovered by Spanish astronomer J. Manteca, is named in his honour.
 * A scholarship for research on primatology was created in memory of and homage to Snowflake. Snowflake's fame also helped to promote awareness of the endangered gorilla species.
 * An illustration and brief description of Snowflake (as of 1969) appears in the Italian children nonfiction book series Guarda e Scopri Gli Animali.
 * The gorilla became a main character in the novel Memòries d'en Floquet de Neu ("Snowflake's Memories") by Catalan writer Toni Sala.
 * Sabater Pi also dedicated a book to the gorilla, under the title Copito para Siempre (Snowflake Forever).
 * He also makes a brief appearance in Italo Calvino's novel Mr. Palomar – the passage is a meditation on loneliness, captivity, the burden of being unique in the world, and mortality.
 * Nature on PBS devoted an episode to him.
 * Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins wrote of Snowflake in his poem, "Searching," published in his 2008 collection, Ballistics.
 * Snowflake appears on the front cover of dance music act Basement Jaxx's album Rooty.
 * While playing at FC Barcelona, Dutch football player Ronald Koeman was nicknamed Copito de Nieve because of his blond hair.
 * Snowflake appeared on The Triplets (Les Tres Bessones) episode "The Triplets meet King Kong" as a guest of honor for the appearance of King Kong in Barcelona's Olympic Stadium.
 * In 2009 French musician Enzo Enzo released the album Toutim where the song Copito De Nieve De Barcelone is dedicated to Snowflake.
 * In 2011, there was a live action/CGI film called Snowflake, the White Gorilla that depicts the fictional childhood of Snowflake (voiced by Kai Stroink in the original Spanish version and by Ariana Grande in the English dub).

Albino gorillas in other media
Other albino (or white-furred) gorillas similar in appearance to Snowflake have appeared in different media.
 * Prior to the birth of Snowflake, the film Son of Kong featured King Kong's son, which was an albino gorilla that was twice the height of a human and was named "Little Kong".
 * In Legends of Chima, the Gorilla Tribe member Grizzam has white fur similar to Snowflake.
 * A white-furred gorilla appears in the French superhero comic series Photonik (featuring in "African Devil"; Volume 1, Mustang #66, 1981), serving as the totem for an evil shaman who wishes to rule all of Africa. As was the case with Snowflake, his entire group is killed by an unscrupulous poacher, and the white gorilla sold into captivity.
 * In The Flash, Solovar was depicted as an albino gorilla.
 * In the Planet of the Apes franchise, an albino western lowland gorilla named Winter (voiced and motion-captured by Aleks Paunovic), appears in Caesar's tribe and defected to the Colonel's side out of fear.
 * In the 2018 film Rampage (which is based on the video game series of the same name), George (motion-captured by Jason Liles) is albino in the movie adaptation to differentiate him from King Kong. Dwayne Johnson stated that George is based on Snowflake.
 * In World of Warcraft, Uhk'loc is a rare tamable gorilla NPC with a unique silver/white skin.
 * In Zoo Empire, you can unlock the Albino gorilla as a species. There's also a program named Snowflake at the education center.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Snowflake (gorilla)


text:
Beltway bandit

Beltway bandit is a term for private companies located in or near Washington, D.C., whose major business is to provide consulting services to the federal government of the United States. The phrase was originally a mild insult, implying that the companies preyed like bandits on the generosity of the federal government, but it has lost much of its pejorative nature and is now often used as a neutral, descriptive term.

The term refers to the Capital Beltway, which is a ring road that surrounds Washington. Many federal government contractors have offices and headquarters near the Beltway because of its proximity to federal agencies and legislators. Civilian contractors tend to locate along the Maryland portion of the Beltway, while defense contractors tend to locate along the Virginia section, which is closer to the Pentagon.

History
An early use of the term may have been from a description of thieves who took advantage of the newly constructed Beltway to rob houses from their back yards, which were now exposed to the highway. Neighbors would not have seen them from the front yards, and by the time the police arrived, the thieves would have used the Beltway to escape to another state, when communications between Virginia and Maryland police departments was fairly rudimentary.

In popular culture
"The Beltway Bandits" is an instrumental piece of music by Frank Zappa on his 1986 Jazz from Hell album. Beltway Bandits is also the name of a Mid-Atlantic Women's Hockey League (amateur ice hockey) team in the DC area.

title: Beltway bandit


text:
User talk:Inmysleep

Hello 'Inmysleep', welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 23:28, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi. I have redirected your article dorsiflexion to Terms for anatomical location where there is more about the subject, but please feel free to write more about the it, and have fun at Wikipedia! Cheers, 141.83.25.151

title: User talk:Inmysleep


text:
Godric

Godric may refer to:

People

 * Godric of Finchale (c. 1060–1170), Anglo-Saxon saint
 * Godric, a novel by Frederick Buechner about Godric of Finchdale
 * Godric of Mappestone (fl. 1086), Anglo-Saxon thane and landowner mentioned in the Domesday Book
 * Godric the Sheriff (died 1066), 11th-century sheriff of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire
 * Godric the Steward (died c. 1114) steward of Ralph de Gael
 * Godric of Winchcombe, a medieval abbot of Winchcombe Abbey

Fiction

 * Godric, known as Godfrey, a character in the Southern Vampire Mysteries novels by Charlaine Harris
 * Godric (True Blood), a fictional character in the television series True Blood adapted from the Southern Vampire Mysteries novels
 * Godric (novel), a 1981 Pulitzer-nominated book by Frederick Buechner about Godric of Finchale
 * Godric Gryffindor, a fictional character in the Harry Potter universe
 * Godric's Hollow, a fictional place in the Harry Potter universe

 * Godrick the Golden a fictional demigod in the videogame Elden Ring. Also referred to as 'Godrick the Grafted'.

title: Godric


text:
User talk:Jaylal

Hello Jaylal, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 23:30, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:Jaylal


text:
User talk:Beckybnau

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Tip: you can sign your name with ~

Dori 23:35, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:Beckybnau


text:
Mickey Leland

George Thomas "Mickey" Leland III (November 27, 1944 – August 7, 1989) was an American politician and anti-poverty activist. He served as a congressman from the Texas 18th District and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. He was a Democrat.

Early years
Leland was born in Lubbock, Texas to Alice and George Thomas Leland, II. At a very early age, the Lelands moved to Houston's Fifth Ward neighborhood.

Growing up in a predominantly African American and Hispanic neighborhood, Leland attended Wheatley High School in Houston, Texas, where he ranked in the top ten percent of his class when he graduated from Wheatley in 1964. While attending Texas Southern University in the late 1960s, he emerged as a vocal leader of the Houston-area civil rights movement and had brought national leaders of the movement to Houston. Leland graduated from Texas Southern in 1970 with a bachelor's degree in Pharmacy. He served as an Instructor of Clinical Pharmacy at his alma mater in 1970–71, where he set up "door-to-door" outreach campaigns in low-income neighborhoods to inform people about their medical care options and performing preliminary screenings.

It was during the administration of then-Texas Southern University President Leonard O. Spearman, where Leland received an honorary doctorate degree from his alma mater.

Texas House of Representatives
In 1972, Texas for the first time allowed its State House of Representatives and Senate seats to be elected as single-member districts. Soon after the decision, five minority candidates (dubbed the "People's Five"), including eventual winners Leland, Craig Washington and Benny Reyes ran for district seats in the Texas House of Representatives, a first for a state that had not seen any African-American state representatives since Reconstruction although Barbara Jordan had been a state senator.

Re-elected in 1974 and again in 1976, Leland served three two-year terms in the Texas House of Representatives, representing the 88th District and while in Austin, he became famous for being a staunch advocate of healthcare rights for poor Texans. He was responsible for the passage of legislation that provided low-income consumers with access to affordable generic drugs, and supported the creation of healthcare access through Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). In order to accomplish his goals in Austin, Leland served on the Texas State Labor Committee, the State Affairs Committee, the Human Resources Committee, the Legislative Council, and the Subcommittee on Occupational and Industrial Safety. He was elected the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Committee on Prison Reform including becoming the first African-American to serve on the Senate–House Conference Committee as a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

U.S. House of Representatives
After six years in the Texas State Legislature, Leland was elected to the United States House of Representatives in November 1978 to represent Texas's 18th District and was re-elected easily in 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986 and again in 1988 to six two-year terms, serving until his death. The congressional district included the neighborhood in which he had grown up, and he was recognized as a knowledgeable advocate for health, children and the elderly. His leadership abilities were immediately noticed in Washington, and he was named to serve as Freshman Majority Whip in his first term, and later served twice as At-Large Majority Whip. Leland was re-elected to each succeeding Congress until his death.

Leland was an effective advocate on hunger and public health issues. In 1984, Leland established the congressional select committee on Hunger and initiated a number of programs designed to assuage the famine crises that plagued Ethiopia and Sudan through much of the 1980s. Leland pioneered many afro-centric cultural norms in Washington which included wearing a dashiki and African-style hats.

As he visited soup kitchens and makeshift shelters, he became increasingly concerned about the hungry and homeless. The work for which he is best remembered began when Leland co-authored legislation with U.S. Rep. Ben Gilman (R-New York State) in establishing the House Select Committee on Hunger. U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill (D-Massachusetts) named Leland chairman when it was enacted in 1984. The Select Committee's mandate was to "conduct a continuing, comprehensive study and review of the problems of hunger and malnutrition."

Although the committee had no legislative jurisdiction, the committee for the first time provided a single focus for hunger-related issues. The committee's impact and influence would stem largely from Leland's ability to generate awareness of complex hunger alleviation issues and exert his personal moral leadership. In addition to focusing attention on issues of hunger, his legislative initiatives would create the National Commission on Infant Mortality, better access for fresh food for at-risk women, children and infants, and the first comprehensive services for the homeless.

Leland's sensitivity to the immediate needs of poor and hungry people would soon make him a spokesperson for hungry people on a far broader scale. Reports of acute famine in sub-Saharan Africa immediately prompted Speaker O'Neill to ask Leland to lead a bipartisan Congressional delegation to assess conditions and relief requirements. When Leland returned, he brought together entertainment personalities, religious leaders and private voluntary agencies to create general public support for the Africa Famine Relief and Recovery Act of 1985. That legislation provided $800 million in food and humanitarian relief supplies. The international attention Leland had focused on the famine brought additional support for non-governmental efforts, saving thousands of lives.

His ability in reaching out to others with innovative ideas and to gain support from unlikely sources was a key to his success in effectively addressing the problems for the poor and minorities. He met with both Pope John Paul II about food aid to Africa and Cuban President Fidel Castro about reuniting Cuban families. In Moscow, as part of the first Congressional delegation led by a Speaker of the House as part of the post-Cold War Era, he proposed a joint US-Soviet food initiative to Mozambique. As Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Leland proudly presented the first awards the caucus had ever given to non-black recipients: rock musician Bob Geldof and news anchor Ted Koppel. Geldof was honored for his Band Aid concert and fund-raising efforts for African famine victims, while Koppel was honored for his news stories on the African famine.

Leland was a powerful advocate on other major issues as well. While chairing the House Select Committee on Hunger, Leland was a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the Subcommittees on Telecommunications and Finance, Health and the Environment, and Energy and Power. He chaired the Subcommittee on Postal Operations and Services and served on the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service and the Subcommittee on Compensation and Employment.

Death
On August 7, 1989, Leland died in a plane crash in Gambela, Ethiopia, during a mission to Fugnido, Ethiopia. A total of 16 people died in the crash, also including the acclaimed writer Roberta Worrick, who wrote under the pen name Maria Thomas. Leland‘s friend and former fellow Texas legislator, Craig Washington, was elected to his unexpired congressional term in December 1989.

Personal life
Leland was Catholic.

Legacy
Since Leland's death, a number of buildings and initiatives have been renamed in his honor:
 * A federal building in Downtown Houston (which currently serves as the congressional headquarters for his most recent successor, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee)
 * The International Terminal (Terminal D) at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston
 * A street in Addis Ababa
 * A condominium village in Addis Ababa
 * The USAID Leland Initiative to improve internet connectivity in Africa
 * The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s Mickey Leland Environmental Internship Program
 * The Department of Energy's Minority Education Initiative was renamed the Mickey Leland Energy Fellowship
 * A large number of other government programs, fellowships, and academic organizations have also been named in his memory.
 * Singer-songwriter Pierce Pettis included a song about Leland on his 1991 album Tinseltown.
 * The Mickey Leland College Preparatory Academy for Young Men in Houston
 * The Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University.
 * So Others Might Eat's Leland Place is a 90-day transitional housing program for 23 homeless men in recovery, located in Washington, DC.
 * Mickey Leland Primary School in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

There is a statue on Leland in Hermann Park, Houston, near the Miller Outdoor Theatre.

Videos
(1) Arrival Ceremony for Leland on August 23, 1989

(2) Memorial Service for Congressman Leland on August 14, 1989

(3) Reaction on the Leland plane crash from August 13, 1989

(4) Update on Leland fatal plane crash from August 13, 1989

(5) Call-in session on the resignation of House Speaker Jim Wright from May 31, 1989

(6) Congressional Black Caucus from May 23, 1989

(7) Black Jewish Relations from April 11, 1989

(8) Judaism Foreign Policy from April 11, 1989

(9) Nominating Speeches at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia from July 21, 1988

(10) Hiring & Promotion Cable TV & Broadcast Industry from May 17, 1988

(11) Program Trading Stock Market Volatility from April 21, 1988

(12) Telephone Rate Regulation from November 10, 1987

(13) World Hunger from October 14, 1987

(14) Iran-Contra Investigation Day 1 from May 5, 1987

(15) South African Sanction Veto Override from September 29, 1986

(16) 1986 Election Briefing from August 14, 1986

(17) Scrambling Satellite Television from June 12, 1986

(18) Jim Wright Roast on May 13, 1986

(19) Mickey Leland Interview from December 16, 1985

(20) Employment Issues from July 10, 1985

(21) William Reynolds Nomination from June 5, 1985

(22) Black Hispanic Breakfast from July 18, 1984

(23) Minority Caucus from July 18, 1984

(24) Broadcast Reform from October 6, 1983

(25) Broadcast Reform from September 23, 1983

(26) Minorities in the Media from September 19, 1983

(27) GM Car Brake Defects from August 5, 1983

title: Mickey Leland


text:
FIRE

FIRE or F.I.R.E. may stand for:

 * FIRE economy, a segment of the stock market: Finance, Insurance, Real Estate
 * FIRE movement, a lifestyle movement: Financial Independence, Retire Early
 * Febrile infection-related epilepsy syndrome (FIRES), a rare form of epilepsy
 * Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals, a network of Reformed Baptist churches
 * Flyby of Io with Repeat Encounters, a proposed spacecraft mission to Jupiter's moon Io
 * Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (formerly Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), a civil liberties organization in the US
 * Fully Integrated Robotised Engine, a series of engines produced by Fiat
 * Future Internet Research and Experimentation, a program funded by the European Union
 * FIRE (Maltese band), a rock band founded in 1998
 * F.I.R.E., a 1991 shoot-em-up game developed by the Slovakian company Ultrasoft
 * F.I.R.E. (Free Inspiring Rising Elements), a Hmong and Lao performance group with May Lee-Yang
 * "F-I-R-E", a 2013 single by the American Christian group Press Play
 * Future in Reverse (FIRE), a performance group founded by composer Huang Ruo
 * Future Investors in Real Estate (F.I.R.E.), a student organization at Suffolk College of Arts and Sciences in Boston, Massachusetts, US

title: FIRE


text:
Talk:Bernhard Riemann

Proper name
He should perhaps be referred to by his more common name of "Georg Riemann."

 * Google has 11,000 hits for "Bernhard Riemann" -Georg and only 700 for "Georg Riemann". -- Curps 23:20, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Quaternions and vectors
Perhaps some mention of his work regarding quaternions and vectors should be mentioned 64.161.172.140 02:14, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * I am not sure that Riemann ever did any work on quaternions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.54.203.27 (talk) 08:39, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Pronunciation
How do you say this guy's name? Is it like ree-man or riy-man or what? The article should reflect this.

I think, regardless of the IPA notation, the pronounciation isn't 'REE mahn' but rather 'REE mun' or 'REE munn'. Perhaps the German 'a' between consonants doesn't comply with the English 'u' between consonants from a linguist's point of view, but to the intuitive point of view of a native German speaker, it fits just right. On the other hand, American or English people with the name ending -mann are pronunced 'man', too, so this pronunciation would add to integrity.

Nationality
Strange to see him described as German, since he was definitely born in the sovereign Kingdom of Hanover. The German nationality only came into existence in 1871, after Riemann's death. Wakari07 (talk) 17:38, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I wish that I had known about the foundation in 1871 earlier. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C0:7C80:8401:B5CF:DF4:7533:172 (talk) 15:15, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

"বার্নাড ৰিমান" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect বার্নাড ৰিমান. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 September 16 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Largoplazo (talk) 11:30, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bernhard Riemann


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Master of the Rolls

The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the President of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and Head of Civil Justice. As a judge, the Master of the Rolls is second in seniority in England and Wales only to the Lord Chief Justice. The position dates from at least 1286, although it is believed that the office probably existed earlier than that.

The Master of the Rolls was initially a clerk responsible for keeping the "Rolls" or records of the Court of Chancery, and was known as the Keeper of the Rolls of Chancery. The Keeper was the most senior of the dozen Chancery clerks, and as such occasionally acted as keeper of the Great Seal of the Realm. The post evolved into a judicial one as the Court of Chancery did; the first reference to judicial duties dates from 1520. With the Judicature Act 1873, which merged the Court of Chancery with the other major courts, the Master of the Rolls joined the Chancery Division of the High Court and the Court of Appeal, but left the Chancery Division by the terms of the Judicature Act 1881. The Master of the Rolls had also been warden of the little-used Domus Conversorum for housing Jewish converts, which led to the house and chapel being used to store legal documents and later becoming the location of the Public Record Office. He retained his clerical functions as the nominal head of the Public Record Office until the Public Records Act 1958 transferred responsibility for it to the Lord Chancellor. One residual reminder of this role is the fact that the Master of the Rolls of the day continues to serve, ex officio, as President of the British Records Association. The Master of the Rolls was also previously responsible for registering solicitors, the officers of the Senior Courts.

One of the most prominent people to hold the position was Thomas Cromwell, a highly influential figure during the reign of Henry VIII; more recently, Lord Denning held the position for 20 years, from 1962 to 1982, and made sweeping changes in the common law. The current Master of the Rolls is Sir Geoffrey Vos, who took office in January 2021.

The Rolls Estate
The substantial estate of the Domus Conversorum, between London and Westminster, became attached to the office of Master of the Rolls, and was known as the "Rolls Estate", regarded as virtually an Inn of Court.

title: Master of the Rolls


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88 (number)

88 (eighty-eight) is the natural number following 87 and preceding 89.

In mathematics
88 is:

88 and 945 are the smallest coprime abundant numbers, since all numbers until 945 are multiples of 2, 945 has 3, 5 and 7 as divisors, and 88 is the first abundant number that doesn't have 3, 5 or 7 as divisors.
 * a refactorable number.
 * a primitive semiperfect number.
 * an untouchable number.
 * a hexadecagonal number.
 * an Erdős–Woods number, since it is possible to find sequences of 88 consecutive integers such that each inner member shares a factor with either the first or the last member.
 * a palindromic number in bases 5 (3235), 10 (8810), 21 (4421), and 43 (2243).
 * a repdigit in bases 10, 21 and 43.
 * a 2-automorphic number.
 * the smallest positive integer with a Zeckendorf representation requiring 5 Fibonacci numbers.
 * a strobogrammatic number.
 * the largest number in English not containing the letter 'n' in its name, when using short scale.

In science and technology

 * The atomic number of the element radium.
 * The number of constellations in the sky as defined by the International Astronomical Union.
 * Messier object M88, a magnitude 11.0 spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices.
 * The New General Catalogue object NGC 88, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Phoenix, and a member of Robert's Quartet.
 * Space Shuttle Mission 88 (STS-88), launched and completed in December 1998, began the construction of the International Space Station.
 * Approximately the number of days it takes Mercury to complete its orbit.

In Chinese culture
Number 88 symbolizes fortune and good luck in Chinese culture, since the word 8 sounds similar to the word fā (發, which implies 發財, or wealth, in Mandarin or Cantonese). The number 8 is considered to be the luckiest number in Chinese culture, and prices in Chinese supermarkets often contain many 8s. The shape of the Chinese character for 8 (八) implies that a person will have a great, wide future as the character starts narrow and gets wider toward the bottom. The Chinese government has been auctioning auto license plates containing many 8s for tens of thousands of dollars. The 2008 Beijing Olympics opened at 8 p.m., 8 August 2008.

In addition, 88 is also used to mean "bye bye (拜拜)" in Chinese-language chats, text messages, SMSs and IMs, because its pronunciation in Mandarin is similar to "bye bye".

In amateur radio
In amateur radio, 88 is used as shorthand for "love and kisses" when signing a message or ending an exchange. It is used in spoken word (radiotelephony), Morse code (radiotelegraphy), and in various digital modes. It is considered rather more intimate than "73", which means "best regards"; therefore 73 is more often used. The two may be used together. Sometimes either expression is pluralized by appending an -s. These number codes originate with the 92 Code adopted by Western Union in 1859.

In neo-Nazism
Neo-Nazis use the number 88 as an abbreviation for the Nazi salute Heil Hitler. The letter H is eighth in the alphabet, whereby 88 becomes HH.

Often, this number is associated with the number 14, e.g. 14/88, 14-88, or 1488; this number symbolizes the Fourteen Words coined by David Lane, a prominent white supremacist. Example uses of 88 include the song "88 Rock 'n' Roll Band" by Landser, and the organizations Column 88 and Unit 88.

The number is banned on Austrian license plates due to its association with "Heil Hitler [and] where H comes in the alphabet". In June 2023, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and the Italian government announced that the number 88 would be banned from use in Italian association football, as part of a joint initiative to combat antisemitism. This followed an incident in March of that year in which a Lazio supporter wore a club shirt bearing the name "Hitlerson" and the number 88, which led to the supporter receiving a lifetime ban from attending Lazio matches.

In other fields
Eighty-eight (88) is also:

 * a popular ice cream bar manufactured by GB Glace
 * the number of keys on a typical piano (36 black and 52 white); a piano is sometimes called an "eighty-eight"
 * 88 Keys, character in the 1990 Dick Tracy film
 * Eighty Eight, a live album by the Christian rock band the 77s
 * in the titles of songs:
 * "Rocket 88", a song first recorded at Sam Phillips' studio in 1951; Rocket 88 was a 1980s United Kingdom band named for the song
 * "88 Lines About 44 Women" by the band The Nails
 * "88 Seconds in Greensboro" by the English new wave band OMD on their 1985 album, Crush
 * "88" by the Canadian punk band Sum 41 on their 2004 album, Chuck
 * "88" by the English nu-metal band Apartment 26 on their second album, Music for the Massive
 * "88", a song by Level 42 on the album Strategy
 * "88" by hip hop act the Cool Kids
 * "88" by the Japanese electro-pop duo LM.C

 * 88 Miles per hour is the speed that Doctor Emmett Brown's Delorean car had to reach in order to attain time travel, in the movie(s) "Back to the Future".

 * the model number of the Oldsmobile 88 automobile and the AGM-88 HARM missile
 * the QBU-88 (or Type 88) Chinese sniper rifle
 * the number of the French department of Vosges
 * the designation of two freeways named Interstate 88, one in Illinois and another in New York
 * in Chinese SMS or chat, short for "bye bye", from the Mandarin pronunciation "ba1 ba1" (8 - 8)
 * in hip hop, where "88" stands for "HH", short for "hip hop"
 * in Kill Bill, the name of O-Ren Ishii's Army, the Crazy 88
 * the ISBN Group Identifier for books published in Italy and Switzerland
 * "the number of the Anti-Terrorist" in the documents submitted to NBC by Seung-Hui Cho prior to the Virginia Tech shooting on 16 April 2007
 * the number of an anti-terrorist police squad, called "Detachment 88", set up by the Indonesian government following the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians
 * Tanner '88, Garry Trudeau's HBO series on the fictional campaign of Congressman Jack Tanner in his bid for the White House
 * 88 Minutes, a 2008 film starring Al Pacino
 * 88, a 2015 Canadian thriller film
 * 88rising, hip hop and rap collective and record label consisting of primarily Asian and Asian American artists.
 * the Group of 88, a group of 88 professors at Duke University who signed a controversial advertisement published after a woman falsely claimed to have been raped by members of Duke's lacrosse team
 * the Cambridge Z88 was a 1988 portable computer
 * 88open was an industry standards group in 1988 created by Motorola to standardize Unix systems
 * an '88-level' is a named condition in the COBOL programming language
 * The House on East 88th Street, a book by Bernard Waber
 * 88-Keys, an American record producer and rapper
 * 88Glam, a Canadian hip-hop duo
 * Two genera of butterflies (Diaethria and Callicore) are called eighty-eights because markings on their wings look like the number 88.
 * The German 8.8 cm FlaK 18/36/37/41 anti-aircraft gun used in WWII was often referred to colloquially as an "88" (acht-acht).
 * R88 is the designation for "all runways" in METAR/TAF weather data
 * The 88 is an American pop rock band.
 * "Lucky 88", a song by Speedy Ortiz

title: 88 (number)


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Godric of Finchale

Godric of Finchale (or St Goderic) (c. 1065-1070 – 21 May 1170) was an English hermit, merchant and popular medieval saint, although he was never formally canonised. He was born in Walpole in Norfolk and died in Finchale in County Durham.

Life
Godric's life was recorded by a contemporary of his, a monk named Reginald of Durham. Several other hagiographies are also extant. According to these accounts, Godric, who began from humble beginnings as the son of Ailward and Edwenna, "both of slender rank and wealth, but abundant in righteousness and virtue". He began as a peddler and became an entrepreneur. "[H]e was wont to wander with small wares around the villages and farmsteads of his own neighbourhood; but, in process of time, he gradually associated himself by compact with city merchants."

Then he was a ship's captain and part owner of two ships, one of which may have conveyed Baldwin I of Jerusalem to Jaffa in 1102. After many pilgrimages around the Mediterranean, Godric found himself off the Farne Islands near Lindisfarne and there was inspired to change his life.

Godric returned to England and lived at Wolsingham with an elderly hermit named Aelric (†1107) for two years. Upon Aelric's death, Godric made one last pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and then returned home where he convinced Ranulf Flambard, the Bishop of Durham, to grant him a place to live as a hermit at Finchale, by the River Wear. He had previously served as doorkeeper, the lowest of the minor orders, at the hospital church of nearby St Giles Hospital in Durham. At Finchale he cleared forests to build a wooden oratory dedicated to the Virgin Mary; later he constructed a stone chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist.

He is recorded to have lived at Finchale for the final sixty years of his life, occasionally meeting with visitors approved by the local prior. As the years passed, his reputation grew, and Thomas Becket and Pope Alexander III both reportedly sought Godric's advice as a wise and holy man. Reginald describes Godric's physical attributes:

"For he was vigorous and strenuous in mind, whole of limb and strong in body. He was of middle stature, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with a long face, grey eyes most clear and piercing, bushy brows, a broad forehead, long and open nostrils, a nose of comely curve, and a pointed chin. His beard was thick, and longer than the ordinary, his mouth well-shaped, with lips of moderate thickness; in youth his hair was black, in age as white as snow; his neck was short and thick, knotted with veins and sinews; his legs were somewhat slender, his instep high, his knees hardened and horny with frequent kneeling; his whole skin rough beyond the ordinary, until all this roughness was softened by old age."

St Godric is perhaps best remembered for his kindness toward animals, and many stories recall his protection of the creatures who lived near his forest home. According to one of these, he hid a stag from pursuing hunters; according to another, he even allowed snakes to warm themselves by his fire. Godric lived on a diet of herbs, wild honey, acorns, crab-apples and nuts. He slept on the bare ground.

Reginald of Durham recorded four songs of St Godric's: they are the oldest songs in English for which the original musical settings survive. Reginald describes the circumstances in which Godric learnt the first song. In a vision the Virgin Mary appeared to Godric with at her side "two maidens of surpassing beauty clad in shining white raiments." They pledged to come to his aid in times of need; and the Virgin herself taught Godric a song of consolation to overcome grief or temptation (Saintë Marië Virginë).

The novel Godric (1981) by Frederick Buechner is a fictional retelling of his life and travels. It was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

A tune named for him by its composer, John Bacchus Dykes, appears in dozens of hymnals.

title: Godric of Finchale


text:
76 (number)

76 (seventy-six) is the natural number following 75 and preceding 77.

In mathematics
76 is:
 * a composite number; a square-prime, of the form (p2, q) where q is a higher prime. It is the ninth of this general form and the seventh of the form (22.q).

 * a Lucas number.
 * a telephone or involution number, the number of different ways of connecting 6 points with pairwise connections.
 * a nontotient.
 * a 14-gonal number.
 * a centered pentagonal number.
 * an Erdős–Woods number since it is possible to find sequences of 76 consecutive integers such that each inner member shares a factor with either the first or the last member.
 * with an aliquot sum of 64; within an aliquot sequence of two composite numbers (76,64,63,1,0) to the Prime in the 63-aliquot tree.
 * an automorphic number in base 10. It is one of two 2-digit numbers whose square, 5,776, and higher powers, end in the same two digits. The other is.

There are 76 unique compact uniform hyperbolic honeycombs in the third dimension that are generated from Wythoff constructions.

In science

 * The atomic number of osmium.
 * The Little Dumbbell Nebula in the constellation Pegasus is designated as Messier object 76 (M76).

In other fields

Seventy-six is also:
 * In colloquial American parlance, reference to 1776, the year of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence.
 * Seventy-Six, an 1823 novel by American writer John Neal.
 * The Spirit of '76, patriotic painting by Archibald MacNeal Willard.
 * A brand of ConocoPhillips gas stations, 76.
 * The number of trombonists leading the parade in "Seventy-Six Trombones", from Meredith Willson's musical The Music Man.
 * The 76ers, a professional basketball team based in Philadelphia.
 * 76, the debut album of Dutch trance producer and DJ Armin van Buuren.
 * Years like 1876 and 1976
 * Fallout 76, a 2018 game by Bethesda Studios.

title: 76 (number)


text:
Talk:Timeline of rulers of Poland

I think it should be merged with and redirected to List of Polish rulers

title: Talk:Timeline of rulers of Poland


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Sahim Alwan

Sahim Alwan is a Yemeni-American who grew up in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York. In 2002, he was arrested and charged as part of the War on Terror together with the other members of the "Lackawanna Six", based on the fact the group of friends had attended an Afghan training camp together years earlier.

Like the others, although initially entering a plea of "not guilty", he eventually pleaded guilty to "providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization". He was convicted and received a 9.5-year sentence.

Life
Described as the "clean-cut" son of a steelworker, Alwan was noted for always wearing a shirt and tie, every day of his adult life, and studied criminal justice at the local community college. During the Gulf War, he and a group of friends were assaulted for their ethnicity outside a Lackawanna restaurant.

In the late 1990s, while working for Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, he cooperated with the FBI to help investigate a fraud case, and asked them about the possibility of working for them as a career.

A "local success story", he maintained a stable marriage, had three children, and worked with the Iroquois Job Corps Center to help employ indigent and troubled youth.

At al-Farooq training camp he was discouraged by the fact they were training for offensive wars and wars against fellow Muslims, rather than in defence of Muslim populations. He announced that he wanted to leave and return home. He met personally with Osama bin Laden, who wanted to convince him to stay and finish his training. Taher, Moseb and Galeb also decided to leave. They were all driven to Quetta, and rather than wait a day for the next plane, took a bus to Karachi so they could leave Pakistan immediately.

Immediately following the September 11th attacks, Alwan was interviewed as a man on the street by the Buffalo News as he left his mosque, to give his opinion on the attacks. He responded that Islam guaranteed hellfire to anyone who took part in a suicide mission. He phoned agent Ed Needham at the FBI that night, to promise his full cooperation in the Muslim community if the FBI needed help.

title: Sahim Alwan


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69 (number)

69 (sixty-nine; ) is the natural number following 68 and preceding 70. An odd number and a composite number, 69 is divisible by 1, 3, 23 and 69. 69 is a semiprime because it is a natural number that is the product of exactly two prime numbers (3 and 23), and an interprime between the numbers of 67 and 71. Because 69 is not divisible by any square number other than 1, it is categorised as a square-free integer. 69 is also a Blum integer since the two factors of 69 are both Gaussian primes. In number theory, 69 is a deficient number, arithmetic number and a congruent number.

The number and its pictograph give its name to the sexual position of the same name. The association of the number with this sex position has resulted in it being associated in meme culture with sex. People knowledgeable of the meme may respond "nice" in response to the appearance of the number, whether intentionally an innuendo or not.

In mathematics
69, spelled sixty-nine and known in Roman numerals as, is the natural number that follows 68 and precedes 70. An odd number, 69 is divisible by 1, 3, 23 and 69. 69 is a composite number, meaning that it is not a prime, and a lucky number because it is a natural number that remains after repeatedly removing every nth number in a sequence of natural numbers, starting from 1. As a natural number that is the product of exactly two prime numbers (a factorisation of 3 x 23), 69 is a semiprime and an interprime between the prime numbers of 67 and 71. The aliquot sum—the total sum of all the divisors of a number, excluding the number itself—of 69 is 27 within the aliquot sequence of numbers where each number is the aliquot sum of the previous number (69, 27, 13, 1, 0). 69 is the third composite number in the 13-aliquot tree, following 27 and 35.

Because 69 is not divisible by any square number other than 1, it is categorised as a square-free integer. 69 is a Blum integer since the two factors of 69 are both Gaussian primes, and an Ulam number—an integer that is the sum of two distinct previously occurring Ulam numbers in a sequence. 69 is a deficient number because the sum of its proper divisors (excluding itself) is less than the number of itself. As an integer for which the arithmetic mean average of its positive divisors is also an integer, 69 is a arithmetic number. 69 is a congruent number—a positive integer that is the area of a right triangle with three rational number sides—and an amenable number. 69 can be expressed as the sum of consecutive positive integers in multiple ways, making it a polite number.

In decimal, 69 is the only natural number whose square ($4,761$) and cube ($328,509$) use every digit from 0–9 exactly once. It is also the largest number whose factorial is less than a googol. On many handheld scientific and graphing calculators, 69! (1.711224524) is the highest factorial that can be calculated due to memory limitations. In its binary expansion of 1000101, 69 is equal to 105 octal, while 105 is equal to 69 hexadecimal (this same property can be applied to all numbers from 64 to 69). In computing, 69 equates to 2120 in ternary (base-3); 153 in senary (base-6); and 59 in duodecimal (base-12).

Visually, 69 is a strobogrammatic number because it looks the same when viewed both right-side and upside down. 69 is a centered tetrahedral number, a figurate number that represents a pyramid with a triangular base and all other points arranged in layers above the base, forming a tetrahedron shape. 69 is also a pernicious number because there is a prime number of 1s when it is written as a binary number, and an odious number as it is a positive integer that has an odd number of 1s in its binary expansion.

In other fields
In chemistry, 69 is the atomic number of thulium, a rare lanthanide (category of metallic elements). In astronomy, the Messier object M69 is a globular cluster in the constellation of Sagittarius; 69 Hesperia is a main-belt asteroid. NGC 69 is the designation given to a barred lenticular galaxy located in the Andromeda constellation. In ASCII, 69 is the decimal for the uppercase E character.

69ing is a sex position wherein each partner aligns themselves to simultaneously achieve oral sex with each other. In reference to this sex act, the number 69 itself has become an Internet meme as an inherently funny number in which users will respond to any occurrence of the number with the word "nice" to draw specific attention to it. This means to humorously imply that the reference to the sex position was intentional. Because of its association with the sex position and resulting meme, 69 has been named "the sex number". In music, the American rapper 6ix9ine (pronounced "six nine") chose the stage name in reference to the sex position as well as the yin-yang symbol.

title: 69 (number)


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Yahya Goba

Yahya Goba is a Yemeni-American who grew up in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York. In 2002, he was arrested and charged as part of the War on Terror together with the other members of the "Lackawanna Six", based on the fact that he and a group of friends had attended an Afghan training camp together years earlier.

Life
When Kamal Derwish moved back to Lackawanna in 2000, he lived with his uncle until Goba volunteered to split an apartment with him. Derwish then began holding regular get-togethers at the apartment, where a group of upwards to 25 young Muslim men would get together to discuss religion and eat pizza. Goba and Jaber Elbaneh tended to "compete" for the attention and favour of Derwish, who spoke of his travels abroad and ostensible history fighting in Palestine. He applied for a new passport, noting that his old one had been destroyed after being thrown in the washing machine in a shirt pocket. Authorities believe and have averred that he was trying to erase incriminating visa stamps marking his overseas visits.

title: Yahya Goba