title: History of Christianity

text: The doctrines of the apostles brought the Early Church into conflict with some Jewish religious authorities, and this eventually led to the martyrdom of SS. Stephen and James the Great and expulsion from the synagogues. Thus, Christianity got an identity distinct from Judaism. The name "Christian" (Greek ) was first used for the disciples in Antioch, as recorded in (Acts 11:26).


title: History of Christianity

text: Sources for the beliefs of the apostolic community include the Gospels and New Testament Epistles. The very earliest reports are in these texts: early Christian creeds and hymns and reports about the Passion, the empty tomb, and appearances of Jesus after his Resurrection. There are reasons to suppose that they were written within a few years of the crucifixion of Jesus and came from the Jerusalem Church.


title: History of Christianity

text: Christianity kept many practices from Jewish tradition. Christianity thought the Jewish scriptures to be sacred and used mostly the Septuagint translation of the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament), the Hebrew Prophets and Writings (the rest of the Old Testament books), and added other texts as the New Testament. Christians professed Jesus to be the God of Israel, having taken human form, and considered Jesus to be the Messiah (Christ) who had been prophesied about in the Old Testament and so was expected by the people of Israel.


title: History of Christianity

text: Christianity continued many Judaic practices: liturgical worship, including the use of incense, an altar, a set of scriptural readings adapted from synagogue practice, use of sacred music in hymns and prayer, and a religious calendar, as well as other typical features: an exclusively male priesthood, and ascetic practices (fasting etc.).


title: History of Christianity

text: The time when most of the apostles had died and their jobs as leaders of the Christian communities in the cities had been taken over by bishops, is called post-apostolic period. It includes the time of persecutions until Christian worship was legalized under Constantine the Great. The earliest recorded use of the term "Christianity" (Greek ) is from this period. The term was used by Ignatius of Antioch "c." 107.


title: History of Christianity

text: Early Christians were subject to various persecutions. This meant even death. Early martyrs included Stephen () and James, son of Zebedee (). Persecutions in larger scale by the authorities of the Roman Empire began with the year 64, when the Emperor Nero blamed them for the great Fire of Rome as the Roman historian Tacitus reported.


title: History of Christianity

text: According to Church tradition, it was under Nero's persecution that the saints Peter and Paul became martyrs in Rome. Several of the New Testament writings mention persecutions and very difficult times. For 250 years there were times when Christians suffered from persecutions, because they refused to worship the Roman emperor. That was seen as treason and punished by execution. But the Christian religion continued to spread throughout the Mediterranean region. In the late fourth century they became the dominant religious force of the Roman Empire.


title: History of Christianity

text: The first to legalize Christianity was the Armenian king Trdat the Third, who announced it the official religion in Armenia in the year 301. Galerius issued an edict permitting the practice of the Christian religion in April of 311. In 313 Constantine I and Licinius announced toleration of Christianity in the Edict of Milan. Constantine became the first Christian emperor; he had learnt about Christianity from his mother, Helena.


title: History of Christianity

text: When Christianity was legalized the Church used the same provinces for administration as the imperial government and called them dioceses. The Bishop of Rome claimed to be the highest amongst all others and chose the title pope.


title: History of Christianity

text: During this era, there were several Ecumenical Councils. These were mostly concerned with Christological disputes. The First Council of Nicaea condemned Arianism and produced the Nicene Creed to define the faith. The Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorianism and affirmed the Blessed Virgin Mary to be Theotokos ("God-bearer" or "Mother of God"). Perhaps the most important was the Council of Chalcedon that affirmed that Christ had two natures, fully God and fully man, at the same time. That meant that Monophysitism was condemned.


title: History of Christianity

text: The Church in the Early Middle Ages saw a "transformation of the Roman world" rather than a "fall of the Roman Empire". With the Muslim invasions of the seventh century, the Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek) areas of Christianity began to take on distinctive shapes, and the Bishops of Rome were more interested in barbarian kings than in the Byzantine Emperors. This led to the coronation of Charlemagne as "Emperor of the Romans" by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day, 800.


title: History of Christianity

text: The city of Rome was affected very much by warfare in Italy during the Early Middle Ages. Emperor Justinian I conquered the Italian kingdom of the Ostrogoths. He made Ravenna, Italy a territory with its own governor, but imperial influence was often limited. After the invasion of the Lombards, Rome had to take care of itself. Thus the popes, out of necessity, found themselves feeding the city with grain from papal estates, negotiating treaties, paying protection money to Lombard warlords, and, failing that, hiring soldiers to defend the city. Eventually, the failure of the Empire to send aid resulted in the popes turning for support from other sources, most especially the Franks.


title: History of Christianity

text: The High Middle Ages is the period from the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 to the close of the fifteenth century, which saw the fall of Constantinople (1453), the end of the Hundred Years' War (1453), the discovery of the New World (1492), and thereafter the Protestant Reformation (1515).


title: History of Christianity

text: The "Investiture Controversy", also known as the "lay investiture controversy", was the most important conflict between secular and religious powers in medieval Europe. It began as a dispute in the 11th century between the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII. The question was who would control appointments of bishops (investiture). The end of lay investiture meant an important loss of royal power, and a loss for ambitious noblemen, for the benefit of Church reform as the pope intended.


title: History of Christianity

text: Bishops collected revenues from estates attached to their bishopric. Noblemen who held lands (fiefdoms) hereditarily passed those lands on within their family. However, a king had more control of lands under the domain of his bishops. Kings would give bishoprics to powerful friends. If a king left a bishopric vacant, he got the money until a bishop was appointed, when he was supposed to repay the earnings. This seldom happened. The Church wanted to end this lay investiture because of the vacant sees simony and other problems. Thus, the Investiture Contest was part of the Church's attempt to reform the episcopate and get better bishops.


title: History of Christianity

text: Pope Gregory VII issued the "Dictatus Papae", which said only the pope may make, break, or move bishops to other sees. The Emperor rejected this. With excommunication and a revolt by his dukes, Henry apologized and was forgiven, though the conflict continued. A similar controversy happened in England between King Henry I and St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury. The English dispute was resolved by a deal in 1107, where the king gave up making bishops but did require an oath of fealty. The later Concordat of Worms ("Pactum Calixtinum") resolved the Imperial investiture controversy with a similar compromise.


title: History of Christianity

text: The Crusades were a military conflicts conducted by Christian knights for the defense of Christians and for the expansion of Christian domains. Generally, the crusades refer to the campaigns in the Holy Land against Muslim forces sponsored by the Papacy. There were other crusades against Islamic forces in southern Spain, southern Italy, and Sicily, as well as the campaigns of Teutonic knights against pagan strongholds in Eastern Europe, and (to a much lesser extent) crusades against Catharism or other Christian heresies.


title: History of Christianity

text: The Holy Land had been part of the Roman Empire, and thus Byzantine Empire, until the Islamic conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries. Thereafter, Christians had generally been permitted to visit the sacred places in the Holy Land until 1071, when the Seljuk Turks closed Christian pilgrimages and assailed the Byzantines, defeating them at the Battle of Manzikert. Emperor Alexius I asked for aid from Pope Urban II (1088-1099) for help against Islamic aggression. Instead of sending money, Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom in a speech made at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095, combining the idea of pilgrimage to the Holy Land with that of waging a holy war against infidels.


title: History of Christianity

text: The East-West Schism, or Great Schism, separated the Church into Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek) branches, i.e. Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. It was the first major division since certain groups in the East rejected the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon (see Oriental Orthodoxy), and was far more significant. Though normally dated to 1054, the East-West Schism was the result of an long time of disagreement between Latin and Greek Christendom over papal primacy and certain doctrinal matters like the "filioque". Bad feelings were intensified by cultural and linguistic differences.


title: History of Christianity

text: The schism became "official" in 1054 when the Pope's legates notified Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople that he had been excommunicated. A few days later, he excommunicated the legates. Attempts at reconciliation were made in 1274 in Lyon and in 1439 in Basel, but in each case the eastern hierarchs who agreed to the unions were repudiated by the Orthodox as a whole. However, reconciliation was achieved between the West and what are now called the "Eastern Rite Catholic Churches". More recently, in 1965 the mutual excommunications were rescinded by the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople, though schism remains.


title: History of Christianity

text: Both groups are descended from the Early Church, both acknowledge the apostolic succession of each other's bishops, and the validity of each other's sacraments. Though both acknowledge the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy understands this as a primacy of honor with limited or no ecclesiastical authority in other dioceses.


title: History of Christianity

text: The Western Schism, or Papal Schism, was a prolonged period of crisis in Latin Christendom from 1378 to 1416, when there were two or more claimants to the See of Rome and thus it was difficult to discern who the true Pope was. The conflict was political, rather than doctrinal, in nature.


title: History of Christianity

text: The Renaissance was a period of great cultural change and achievement, marked in Italy by a classical orientation and an increase of wealth through mercantile trade. The City of Rome, the Papacy, and the Papal States were all affected by the Renaissance. On the one hand, it was a time of great artistic patronage and architectural magnificence, where the Church patroned such artists as Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Bramante, Raphael, Fra Angelico, Donatello, and da Vinci. On the other hand, wealthy Italian families often secured episcopal offices, including the papacy, for their own members, some of whom were known for immorality, such as Alexander VI and Sixtus IV.


title: History of Christianity

text: In the early 16th century, movements were begun by two theologians, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, that aimed to reform the Church. Unlike earlier reformers they considered the root of corruptions to be doctrinal (rather than simply a matter of moral weakness or lack of ecclesiastical discipline) and thus they aimed to change contemporary doctrines to fit their idea of the "true gospel". The Protestant Reformation is so called because the movement's leaders "protested" against the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the pope, essentially electing to institute their reforms separately from it. The term "Protestant", however, was not originally used by these leaders; instead, they called themselves "evangelical", emphasizing the "return to the true gospel (Greek: "euangelion")".


title: History of Christianity

text: The beginning of the Protestant Reformation is generally identified with Martin Luther and the posting of the 95 Theses in 1517 in Wittenburg, Germany. Early protest was against corruptions such as simony, episcopal vacancies, and the sale of indulgences. The Protestant position, however, would come to incorporate doctrinal changes such as sola scriptura and sola fide. The three most important traditions to emerge directly from the Protestant Reformation were the Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist, Presbyterian, etc.), and Anglican traditions, though the latter group identifies as both "Reformed" and "Catholic", and some subgroups reject the classification as "Protestant".


title: History of Christianity

text: The Protestant Reformation may be divided into two distinct but basically simultaneous movements, the Magisterial Reformation and the Radical Reformation. The Magisterial Reformation involved the alliance of certain theological teachers (Latin: "magistri") such as Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, Cranmer, etc. with secular magistrates who cooperated in the reformation of Christendom. Radical Reformers, besides forming communities outside state sanction, often employed more extreme doctrinal change, such as the rejection of tenants of the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon. Often the division between magisterial and radical reformers was as or more violent than the general Catholic and Protestant hostilities.


title: History of Christianity

text: The Protestant Reformation spread almost entirely within the confines of Northern Europe, but did not take hold in certain northern areas such as Ireland and parts of Germany. By far the magisterial reformers were more successful and their changes more widespread than the radical reformers. The Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation is known as the Counter Reformation, or Catholic Reformation, which resulted in a reassertion of traditional doctrines and the emergence of new religious orders aimed at both moral reform and new missionary activity. The Counter Reformation reconverted approximately 33% of Northern Europe to Catholicism and initiated missions in South and Central America, Africa, Asia, and even China and Japan. Protestant expansion outside of Europe occurred on a smaller scale through colonization of North America and areas of Africa.


title: History of Christianity

text: Martin Luther was an Augustinian friar and professor at the University of Wittenberg. In 1517, he published a list of 95 Theses, or points to be debated, concerning the illicitness of selling indulgences. Luther had a particular disdain for Aristotelian philosophy, and as he began developing his own theology, he increasingly came into conflict with other scholars. Soon, Luther began to develop his theology of justification, or how one is "made right" (righteous) in the eyes of God.


title: History of Christianity

text: In Catholic theology, one is made righteous by a progressive infusion of grace accepted through faith and cooperated with through good works. Luther's doctrine of justification was different. He said justification meant "the declaring of one to be righteous", where God imputes the merits of Christ upon one who remains without inherent merit. In this process, good works are more of an unessential byproduct that contribute nothing to one's own state of righteousness. Conflict between Luther and leading theologians lead to his gradual rejection of authority of the Church hierarchy. In 1520, he was condemned for heresy by the papal bull "Exsurge Domine", which he burned at Wittenburg along with books of canon law.


title: History of Christianity

text: John Calvin was a French cleric and doctor of law turned Protestant reformer in the second generation of the Reformation. He was well known for publishing the "Institutes of the Christian Religion", in 1536 (later revised), and became a leader of the Reformed church in Geneva, which became an "unofficial capital" of Reformed Christianity in the second half of the sixteenth century. He had great authority in the city and over the city council, such that he has (rather ignominiously) been called a "Protestant pope".


title: History of Christianity

text: Calvin established an eldership together with a "consistory", where pastors and the elders established matters of religious discipline for the Genevan population. Calvin's theology is best known for his doctrine of (double) predestination, which held that God had, from all eternity, providentially foreordained who would be saved (the elect) and likewise who would be damned (the reprobate). Predestination was not the dominant idea in Calvin's works, but it would seemingly become so for many of his Reformed successors.


title: History of Christianity

text: Unlike other reform movements, the English Reformation began by royal influence. Henry VIII considered himself a thoroughly Catholic King, and in 1521 he defended the papacy against Luther in a book he commissioned entitled, "The Defense of the Seven Sacraments", for which Pope Leo X awarded him the title "Fidei Defensor" (Defender of the Faith). However, the king came into conflict with the papacy when he wished to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, for which he needed papal sanction. Catherine, among many other noble relations, was the aunt of Emperor Charles V, the papacy's most significant secular supporter. The ensuing dispute eventually lead to a break from Rome and the declaration of the King of England as head of the English (Anglican) Church. England then experienced a period of frenetic and eclectic reforms, some more radical and others more traditional, under monarchs such as Edward VI and Elizabeth I, and Archbishops of Canterbury such as Thomas Cranmer and William Laud. What emerged was a state church that considered itself both "Reformed" and "Catholic" but not "Roman" (and hesitated from the title "Protestant"), and other "unofficial" more radical movements such as the Puritans.


title: History of Christianity

text: The Counter-Reformation, or Catholic Reformation, was the response of the Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation. The essence of the Counter-Reformation was a renewed conviction in traditional practices and the upholding of Catholic doctrine as the source of ecclesiastic and moral reform, and the answer to halting the spread of Protestantism. Thus it experienced the founding of new religious orders, such as the Jesuits, the establishment of seminaries for the proper training of priests, renewed worldwide missionary activity, and the development of new yet orthodox forms of spirituality, such as that of the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality. The entire process was spearheaded by the Council of Trent, which clarified and reasserted doctrine, issued dogmatic definitions, and produced the "Roman Catechism".


title: History of Christianity

text: Though Ireland, Spain, France, and elsewhere featured significantly in the Counter-Reformation, its heart was Italy and the various popes of the time, who established the "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" (the list of prohibited books) and the Roman Inquisition, a system of juridical tribunals that prosecuted heresy and related offences. The Papacy of St. Pius V (1566-1572) was known not only for its focus on halting heresy and worldly abuses within the Church, but also for its focus on improving popular piety in a determined effort to stem the appeal of Protestantism. Pius began his pontificate by giving large alms to the poor, charity, and hospitals, and the pontiff was known for consoling the poor and sick, and supporting missionaries. The activities of these pontiffs coincided with a rediscovery of the ancient Christian catacombs in Rome. As Diarmaid MacCulloch stated, "Just as these ancient martyrs were revealed once more, Catholics were beginning to be martyred afresh, both in mission fields overseas and in the struggle to win back Protestant northern Europe: the catacombs proved to be an inspiration for many to action and to heroism."


title: History of Christianity

text: The First Great Awakening was a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants in the American colonies "c". 1730-1740, emphasizing the traditional Reformed virtues of Godly preaching, rudimentary liturgy, and a deep sense of personal guilt and redemption by Christ Jesus. Historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom saw it as part of a "great international Protestant upheaval" that also created Pietism in Germany, the Evangelical Revival, and Methodism in England. It centered on reviving the spirituality of established congregations, and mostly affected Congregational, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Baptist, and Methodist churches, while also spreading within the slave population. The Second Great Awakening (1800–1830s), unlike the first, focused on the unchurched and sought to instill in them a deep sense of personal salvation as experienced in revival meetings. It also sparked the beginnings of Restorationist groups such as the Mormons and the Holiness movement. The Third Great Awakening began from 1857 and was most notable for taking the movement throughout the world, especially in English speaking countries. The final group to emerge from the "great awakenings" in North America was Pentecostalism, which had its roots in the Methodist, Wesleyan, and Holiness movements, and began in 1906 on Azusa Street, in Los Angeles. Pentecostalism would later lead to the Charismatic movement.


title: History of Christianity

text: Restorationism refers to various unaffiliated movements that considered contemporary Christianity, in all its forms, to be a deviation from the true, original Christianity, which these groups then attempted to "Reconstruct", often using the Book of Acts as a "guidebook" or sorts. Restorationism developed out of the Second Great Awakening and is historically connected to the Protestant Reformation, but differs in that Restorationists do not usually describe themselves as "reforming" a Christian church continuously existing from the time of Jesus, but as "restoring" the Church that they believe was lost at some point. The name Restoration is also used to describe the Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and the Jehovah's Witness Movement.


title: History of Christianity

text: Fascism describes certain related political regimes in 20th century Europe, especially Nazi Germany. When the Italian government closed Catholic youth organizations, Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical "Non Abbiamo Bisogno", saying that Fascist governments had hidden "pagan intentions" and expressed the irreconcilability of the Catholic position and Fascism, which placed the nation above God and fundamental human rights and dignity. He later signed agreements with the new rulers of Italy and Germany.


title: History of Christianity

text: Many Catholic priests and monastics were persecuted under the Nazi regime, such as the concentration camp victims Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross). Furthermore, many Catholic laypeople and clergy helped in sheltering Jews during the Holocaust, including Pope Pius XII. Various incidents, such as giving aid to downed Allied airmen, nearly caused Nazi Germany to invade the Vatican before the liberation of Rome in 1944.


title: History of Christianity

text: The relationship between Nazism and Protestantism, especially the German Lutheran Church, is complex. Though the majority of Protestant church leaders in Germany made little comment on the Nazis' growing anti-Jewish activities, some, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a Lutheran pastor) were strongly opposed to the Nazis. Bonhoeffer was later found guilty in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and executed.


title: History of Christianity

text: Fundamentalist Christianity, is a movement that arose mainly within British and American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in reaction to modernism and certain liberal Protestant groups that denied doctrines considered fundamental to Christianity yet still called themselves "Christian". Thus, fundamentalism sought to reestablish tenants that could not be denied without relinquishing a Christian identity, the "fundamentals": the Bible as God`s word, viewed as the sole source of authority, the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of atonement through Jesus, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the imminent return of Christ.


title: History of Christianity

text: Ecumenism broadly refers to movements between Christian groups to establish a degree of unity through dialogue. ""Ecumenism"" is derived from Greek "" (oikoumene), which means "the inhabited world", but more figuratively something like "universal oneness". The movement can be distinguished into Catholic and Protestant movements, with the latter characterized by a redefined ecclesiology of "denominationalism" (which the Catholic Church, among others, rejects).


title: History of Christianity

text: Concerning the Greek Orthodox Church, steady movement was made to reconcile the East-West Schism. On 30 November 1894, Pope Leo XIII publishes the Apostolic Letter "Orientalium Dignitas" (On the Churches of the East) safeguarding the importance and continuance of the Eastern traditions for the whole Church. On 7 December 1965, a Joint Catholic-Orthodox Declaration of His Holiness Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I was issued lifting the mutual excommunications of 1054.


title: History of Christianity

text: Concerning Catholic relations with Protestant communities, certain commissions were established to foster dialogue and documents have been produced aimed at identifying points of doctrinal unity, such as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification produced with the Lutheran World Federation in 1999.


title: History of Christianity

text: Ecumenical movements within Protestantism have focused on determining a list of doctrines and practices essential to being Christian and thus extending to all groups which fulfill these basic criteria a (more or less) equal status, with perhaps one's own group still retaining a "first among equal" standing. This process involved a redefinition of the idea of "the Church" from traditional theology. This ecclesiology, known as denominationalism, contends that each group (which fulfills the essential criteria of "being Christian") is a sub-group of a greater "Christian Church", itself a purely abstract concept with no direct representation, i.e. no group, or "denomination", claims to be "the Church". Obviously, this ecclesiology it at variance with other groups that indeed consider themselves to be "the Church". But moreover, because the "essential criteria" generally consist of belief in the holy Trinity, it has resulted in strife between these Protestant ecumenical movements and non-Trinitarian groups such as Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and Jehovah's Witnesses, which are not often not regarded as Christian by these ecumenical groups.


title: History of Christianity

text: The following link provides quantitative data related to Christianity and other major religions, including rates of adherence at different points in time:


title: Tense (grammar)

text: Tense is the form of a verb that shows the time something happened, or is going to happen. There are three main tenses:


title: Tense (grammar)

text: Tense can be shown by changing the spelling of a verb. For example, "be" can become "am", "is", and "are" in present tense, and "was" and "were" in past tense. In English, future tense is shown by adding "will" before the verb. For example, "be" becomes "will be" in future tense.


title: Tense (grammar)

text: In addition to tense, verbs can also indicate the completion, progress, or duration of an action. This is done by adding "helping words" or "auxiliary words", such as "be" and "have", before the verb. For example, "I give", "I have given", "I am giving", and "I have been giving" are all in present tense, but have different meanings"." This is called aspect.


title: Tense (grammar)

text: Other languages have different ways of showing tense. For example, Latin usually shows tense by changing the verb, like English. However, Chinese and Indonesian show tense by adding new words, instead of changing the verb.


title: Orders of magnitude (time)

text: An order of magnitude describes the link between two amounts. The difference between each step is usually 10, with each order being either 10 times greater or 10 times smaller than the next amount. This makes the scale easy to manipulate using logarithms. For time, the difference between the smallest limit of time, the Planck time, and the next order of magnitude is larger than 10.


title: Chinese characters

text: Chinese characters are symbols used to write the Chinese and Japanese languages. In the past, other languages like Korean and Vietnamese also used them. The beginning of these characters was at least 3000 years ago, making them one of the oldest writing systems in the world that is still used today. In Chinese they are called "hanzi" (), which means "Han character". In Japanese they are called "kanji," "hanja" in Korean, and "chữ Hán" in Vietnamese.


title: Chinese characters

text: Chinese characters are an important part of East Asian culture. The art of writing Chinese characters is called calligraphy.


title: Chinese characters

text: Chinese characters are a type of logogram, which are written symbols that represent words instead of sounds. Most earlier Chinese characters were pictographs, which are simple pictures used to mean some kind of thing or idea. Today, very few modern Chinese characters are pure pictographs, but are a combination of two or more simple characters, also known as radicals. While many radicals and characters show a word's meaning, some give hints of the word's pronunciation instead.


title: Chinese characters

text: To better explain the different purposes and types of Chinese characters that exist, Chinese scholars have divided Chinese characters into six categories known as "liushu" (六书 / 六書), literally translated as the "Six Books". The six types of Chinese characters are:


title: Chinese characters

text: Common examples of words using phonetic characters are the names of countries, such as Canada, which is pronounced "Jiānádà" (加拿大) in Chinese. While the third character 大 "dà", which has the meaning "big/large/great", seems to describe Canada well, since it is a big country, the first two characters 加 "jiā", meaning "to add", and 拿 "ná", meaning "to take", have no obvious relation to Canada. Therefore, it is safe to say that these characters were chosen only because the pronunciation of each character sounds similar to the syllables of the English name of the country.


title: Chinese characters

text: Nobody knows exactly how many Chinese characters there are, but the biggest Chinese dictionaries list about fifty thousand characters, even though most of them are only variants of other characters seen in very old texts. For example, the character 回 (huí) has also been written as the variant characters 迴，廻，囬，逥，廽，and 囘, although most Chinese people only know and use the variant 回. Studies in China show that normally three to four thousand characters are used in daily life, so it is safe to say that someone needs to know three to four thousand characters to be functionally literate in Chinese, or be able to read everyday writing without serious problems.


title: Chinese characters

text: Characters are a kind of graphic language, much different from languages that use an alphabet such as English. The correct way to tell between them is to remember the structure and meaning of every character, not pronunciation, because there is a very close relationship between meaning and structure of characters. Example: 房(house)=户+方. 房 is a shape-pronunciation character. 户 is for shape and 方 is for pronunciation. 户 means 'door'. 房 means 'A person lives behind a door'. 方 pronunciation is "fang" and tone is 1, and with the tone mark it is written as "fāng". 房 pronunciation is also "fang", but tone is 2, with the tone mark it is written as "fáng".


title: Chinese characters

text: There are still many Chinese characters that are used in Japanese and Korean. Generally the educational level of a Japanese person is decided by the number of Chinese characters understood by this person. While Koreans nowadays mostly write in hangul, the native Korean alphabet, people have found that some meanings cannot be expressed clearly by just hangul, so people need to use Chinese characters as a note with a bracket. Before 1446, Korean people only used Chinese characters.


title: Chinese characters

text: In Japanese, characters that are borrowed from the Chinese language are called kanji. Kanji can be used to write both native Japanese words and Chinese loanwords. Japanese writing uses a mix of kanji and two kana systems. Kanji is mostly used to show a word's meaning, while hiragana and katakana are syllabaries that show the pronunciation of Japanese words. Both writing systems are used often when writing Japanese.


title: Chinese characters

text: In Korean, they are called hanja. Throughout most of Korean history, hanja was the only writing system most literate Koreans knew. Even though hangul was invented in 1446, it was only used by commoners and not the government until Korea gained independence from Japan. Nowadays, most Koreans write mostly in hangul. In North Korea, people write almost completely in hangul since Kim Il-sung abolished hanja from Korean. In South Korea, people mostly write in hangul, and they sometimes write hanja. Native Korean words are almost always written in hangul. Hanja are usually only used to write words that are borrowed from the Chinese language, and are usually only used when the word's meaning isn't obvious based on the context.


title: Chinese characters

text: In Vietnamese, they are called chữ Nôm. Many Chinese loanwords were used in Vietnamese, especially in old Vietnamese literature. While Vietnamese used many Chinese characters, they also invented tens of thousands of their own characters to write Vietnamese words. The radicals used in chữ Nôm were usually a mix of the words' meanings and pronunciations.


title: Spice Girls

text: The Spice Girls are a British girl group. The group formed in 1994. The group has five members. Each member uses a nickname initially given to them: Melanie Chisholm ("Sporty Spice"), Emma Bunton ("Baby Spice"), Melanie Brown ("Scary Spice"), Victoria Beckham (née Adams) ("Posh Spice"), and Geri Halliwell ("Ginger Spice") . They were signed to Virgin Records. The Spice Girls released their debut single, "Wannabe" in 1996. It hit number-one in more than 30 countries. The song helped make the group as a global phenomenon. The group is credited for starting the trend of commercial success of teen pop in the late 1990s. Their debut album, "Spice", sold more than 28 million copies worldwide. It is the best-selling album by a female group in music history. They have sold over 75 million records worldwide. This makes them the best-selling female group of all time. It also makes them the most successful British band since the Beatles.


title: Spice Girls

text: The group released three albums: Spice in 1996, Spice World in 1997 and Forever in 2000. The Spice Girls starred in , which was released in December 1997.


title: Spice Girls

text: The members reunited in 2007. They released a "Greatest Hits" album in November and said a world tour would start in December. On 1 February 2008, the group said that they would be ending the tour early.


title: Spice Girls

text: In 2012, they reunited again to perform at the closing ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party from 1933 until his death in 1945. He and his Nazi government are known for causing World War II and the Holocaust. Millions of people were killed in these events.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler became the leader of the Nazi Party in 1921. He led them to become the most powerful political party in Germany after the 1932 elections. He began running the government when he became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The Nazis banned all other political parties and turned Germany into a dictatorship, meaning that the government was ruled by one person. Hitler's dictatorship is known as Nazi Germany, and also as the Third Reich (meaning "Third Empire" or "Third Realm"). Hitler called himself the "Führer" (meaning "leader") after 1934.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler ordered the takeover of Poland in 1939, and this started World War II in Europe. Hitler made all the important decisions during the war. At first, Nazi Germany did well in the war, but by 1945 they were losing. Hitler shot himself on 30 April 1945, as the Soviet Army got to Berlin, because he did not want to be captured alive by the Soviet Union.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Because of the Nazi government, at least 50 million people died. About 28.7 million soldiers and people died in the fighting. The war also killed 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. Nazi forces committed many war crimes during the war. They killed their enemies or put them in concentration camps and death camps. Hitler and his men persecuted and killed Jews and other ethnic, religious, and political minorities. In what is called the Holocaust, the Nazis killed six million Jews, Roma people, homosexuals, Slavs, and many other groups of people.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler's family was born in Waldviertel, in Lower Austria. At the time, the name "Hitler" changed in this region several times between "Hüttler", "Hiedler", "Hittler" and "Hitler". The name was commonly in the German-speaking area of Europe in the 19th century. The literature says that this name is descended from the Czech name "Hidlar" or "Hidlarcek".


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889, as the fourth child of six in Braunau am Inn. This is a small town near Linz in the province of Upper Austria, close to the border with Germany. At the time, the town was in Austria-Hungary. His parents were Klara Pölzl and Alois Hitler. Because of his father's job, Hitler moved from Braunau to Passau, later to Lambach and finally to Leonding. He attended several Volksschule's.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler's mother, Klara Pölzl, was his father's third wife and also his cousin. Hitler's father died in 1903.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler failed high school exams in Linz twice. In 1905, he left school. He became interested in the anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish), Pan-German teachings of Professor Leopold Poetsch. In September 1907, he went to Vienna and took an entrance examination. On 1 and 2 October, he failed the second examination. Hitler went back to Linz at the end of October. In December 1907, Hitler's mother died and, because of that, he was depressed. Hitler's mother was Catholic, but Hitler is not known to have been personally interested in Christianity.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: In 1909, Hitler again went to Vienna to study art. He tried to become a student at the Academy of Arts, but failed the first entrance examination. He made many paintings and sold them at low prices. Hitler said he first became an anti-Semite in Vienna. This city had a large Jewish community.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: In 1913, Hitler was 24 years old. At that time, all young Austrian men had to join the army. Hitler did not like the Austrian army and the Austro-Hungarian Empire because of its many ethnic groups, so he left Austria for Germany. He lived in the German city of Munich.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: On 16 August 1914, Hitler joined the Bavarian army. He fought for the German Empire in World War I. Hitler served in Belgium and France in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment. He spent nearly the whole time on the Western Front. He was a runner, one of the most dangerous jobs on the Front. That means he ran from one position to another one to carry messages. On 1 November 1914, Hitler became a Gefreiter (which was like being a private first class in the United States Army, or a lance corporal in the British Army). The government awarded him the Iron Cross Second Class on 2 December 1914.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: On 5 October 1916, Hitler was hurt by a bullet shell. Between 9 October and 1 December, he was in the military hospital "Belitz". In March 1917, he went back to the front. There, he fought in a battle and was awarded with the Militärverdienstkreuz Third Class with swords.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: In March 1918, Hitler participated in the Spring Offensive. On 4 August 1918, Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross First Class by the Jewish Hugo Gutmann. After Germany surrendered, Hitler was shocked, because the German army still held enemy area in November 1918.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: After World War I, Hitler stayed in the army and returned to Munich. There he attended the funeral march of the Bavarian prime minister Kurt Eisner, who had been killed. In 1919, he participated in a training programme for propaganda speakers from 5 to 12 June and 26 June to 5 July.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Later that year, Hitler joined a small political party called the German Workers Party. He became member number 555. He soon won the support of the party's members. Two years later, he became the party's leader. He renamed the party the National Socialist German Workers Party. It became known as the Nazi Party.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: In 1923, Hitler got together several hundred other members of the Nazi Party and tried to take over the Weimar Republic government (1918–34) in the Beer Hall Putsch. The coup failed. The government killed 13 of his men (the 13 dead men were later declared saints in Nazi ideology). They also put Hitler in the Landsberg Prison. They said that he would stay in prison for five years, but they let him leave after nine months.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: While Hitler was in prison, he wrote a book with the help of his close friend Rudolf Hess. At first, Hitler wanted to call the book "Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice". In the end, he called the book ""Mein Kampf"" ("My Struggle").


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler may also have been influenced by Martin Luther's "On the Jews and their Lies". In "Mein Kampf", Hitler says Martin Luther was "a great warrior, a true statesman and a great reformer."


title: Adolf Hitler

text: In January 1933, Hitler was elected into the German government and became a dictator in the next months. He ended freedom of speech, and put his enemies in prisons and concentration camps or killed them. He did not allow any other political party except the Nazi party by the summer of 1933. Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, spread extreme nationalism within Germany. All media had to praise the Nazis. Also, more people were born because Hitler wanted more people of the "master race" (those he called "Aryans"). After the death of Paul von Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler declared the office of President vacant and made himself "Führer" (both Head of State and Head of Government) and became a full dictator with no checks and balances. He made Germany a totalitarian Nazi state.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler was also responsible for the Beer Hall Putsch Of 1923. In the Night of the Long Knives Of 1934 he had Ernst Röhm the head of the SA killed by Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and the SS. They were also involved in Kristallnacht (1938) .


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler is credited with starting World War II by ordering the German Army to invade Poland. His army took over western Poland, and later most of Europe, including France and a large part of the Soviet Union.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: During the war, Hitler ordered the Nazis to kill many people, including women and children. The Nazis killed around six million Jews in the Holocaust. Other people that the Nazis killed were Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, Slavs such as Russians and Poles, and his political opponents.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Finally, some of the other countries in the world worked together to defeat Germany. Hitler lost all of the lands that he had taken. Millions of Germans were killed in the war. At the end of World War II, Hitler gave all people in the "Führerbunker" permission to leave it. Many people did and moved to the region of Berchtesgaden. They used planes and truck convoys.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Hitler, the Göbbels family, Martin Bormann, Eva Braun and some other staff remained in the bunker. Hitler married to Eva Braun on 29 April 1945.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Forty hours after Hitler and Eva Braun got married in Berlin Germany, both of them committed suicide by poisoning themselves with cyanide, then Hitler shot himself in the head with his gun. Before this, Hitler ordered that their bodies be burned. This prevented him from being captured alive by soldiers of the Red Army, who were closing in on him.


title: Adolf Hitler

text: Ian Kershaw, a historian who wrote a biography (life story) of Hitler, describes him as a modern symbol of evil. "Never in history has such ruination ... been [linked] with the name of one man." However, Kershaw and some other historians believe that it is more important to look at the wider problems in Germany at the time, rather than at Hitler himself, to explain why the war and the Holocaust happened.


title: Golden Edge

text: Golden Edge (formerly Golden 2) is a Latin American subscription television channel of Mexican origin, owned by Televisa, operated by its subsidiary Televisa Networks.


title: Golden Edge

text: The channel was launched in 2003 as Golden 2 to complement the Golden channel in the Latin American market. On March 1, 2010 the channel was renamed Golden Edge.


title: Hexadecimal

text: The hexadecimal numeral system, often shortened to "hex", is a numeral system made up of 16 symbols (base 16). The standard numeral system is called decimal (base 10) and uses ten symbols: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Hexadecimal uses the decimal numbers and six extra symbols. There are no numerical symbols that represent values greater than nine, so letters taken from the English alphabet are used, specifically A, B, C, D, E and F. Hexadecimal A = decimal 10, and hexadecimal F = decimal 15.


title: Hexadecimal

text: Humans mostly use the decimal (base 10) system where each digit can have one of ten values between zero and ten. This is probably because humans have ten fingers on their hands. Computers generally represent numbers in binary (base 2). In binary, each "binary digit" is called a bit and can only have one of two values: one or zero. Since a single bit's two possible values represents one fifth the information potentially conveyed by of decimal digit's ten possible values, binary representations of integer values can require many more (binary) bits than decimal digits.


title: Hexadecimal

text: For example, the three digit decimal value 219 requires eight bits to be represented in binary (11011011). Humans find reading, remembering, and typing long strings of bits inconvenient. Hexadecimal allows groups of four bits to be more conveniently represented by a single "hex" digit, so the eight bit binary value 11011011 only requires two hexadecimal digits "DB."


title: Hexadecimal

text: Computer memory is organized as an array of strings of bits called bytes. On modern computers, each byte generally contains eight bits, which can be conveniently be represented as two hexadecimal digits. Engineers and computer scientists frequently refer to each of these four-bit values as a nibble (sometimes spelled nybble, see computer jargon).


title: Hexadecimal

text: To avoid confusion with decimal, octal or other numbering systems, hexadecimal numbers are sometimes written with a "h" after or "0x" before the number. For example, 63h and 0x63 mean 63 hexadecimal.


title: Hexadecimal

text: Unlike modern computers, many early computers had six-bit bytes. Programmers of those systems typically used an alternate bit grouping scheme called octal. Each octal digit efficiently represents three bits, and a six-bit byte can be represented as two octal digits. Three bits, each being on or off, can represent the eight numbers from 0 to 7: 000 = 0; 001 = 1; 010 = 2; 011 = 3; 100 = 4; 101 = 5; 110 = 6 and 111 = 7.


title: Hexadecimal

text: Hexadecimal is similar to the octal numeral system (base 8) because each can be easily compared to the binary numeral system. Hexadecimal uses a four-bit binary coding. This means that each digit in hexadecimal is the same as four digits in binary. Octal uses a three-bit binary system.


title: Hexadecimal

text: In the decimal system, the first digit is the "one's" place, the next digit to the left is the "ten's" place, the next is the "hundred's" place, etc. In hexadecimal, each digit can be 16 values, not 10. This means the digits have the "one's" place, the "sixteen's" place, and the next one is the "256's" place. So 1h = 1 decimal, 10h = 16 decimal, and 100h = 256 in decimal.


title: Hexadecimal

text: Changing a number from binary to hex uses a grouping method. The binary number is separated into groups of four digits starting from the right. These groups are then converted to hexadecimal digits as shown in the chart above for the hexadecimal numbers 0 through F. To change from hexadecimal, the reverse is done. The hex digits are each changed to binary and the grouping is usually removed.


title: Hexadecimal

text: When the quantity of bits in a binary numbers is not a multiple of 4, it is padded with zeros to make it so. Examples:


title: Hexadecimal

text: The next method is more commonly done when converting a number in software. It does not need to know how many digits the number has before it starts, and it never multiplies by more than 16, but it looks longer on paper.


title: Rose

text: There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. The flowers of the rose grow in many different colors, from the well-known red rose or yellow rose and sometimes white or purple rose.


title: Rose

text: Roses belong to the family of plants called Rosaceae. All roses were originally wild: they grew in North America, Europe, northwest Africa and many parts of Asia and Oceania. There are over 100 different species of roses. The wild rose species can be grown in gardens, but most garden roses are cultivars, which have been selected by people.


title: Rose

text: Over hundreds of years they have been specially bred to produce a wide variety of growing habits and a broad range of colours from dark red to white including as well yellow and a bluish/lilac colour. Many roses have a strong, pleasant scent.


title: Rose

text: Most roses have spines (incorrectly called thorns) on their stems. This is a common defense system in plants.


title: Rose

text: Rose bushes are able to live in a wide variety of conditions. The fruit of the rose is called a hip. Some roses have decorative hips.


title: Rose

text: Roses are widely used across the world as symbols of love, sympathy or sorrow. Rose is widely used as a girl's name.


title: Rose

text: The rose was sacred to Venus (mythology). Venus was the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It was also linked with Cupid (son of Venus). He was the Roman god of desire – in one myth, he dropped nectar and the nectar bubbled up from the ground as roses. The rose was also sacred to Bacchus. He was the Roman god of wine.


title: Rose

text: Rich Romans would lie on couches with roses laid on them. They would wear roses tied onto string around their neck. Anything which was said "under the rose" was considered to be a secret. Cleopatra VII of Egypt was said to have had a floor of her palace covered in roses before her lover Mark Antony visited her.


title: Rose

text: The flower of the rose plant can be different sizes. It may be as small as 1/2 inch across to a diameter of almost 7 inches.


title: Rose

text: Also, roses can be used for good scent. The scent of the rose comes from tiny perfume glands on the petals, which can be seen through a powerful microscope. Sometimes rose petals are dried and packed so that you can use them for decoration or for scent.


title: Rose

text: Roses can be seen very much in gardens. Sometimes they can be in vineyards as well. In a big vineyard, a bush of roses are planted at the end of each row of vines. As long as the roses stay healthy, the vine growers can see that their vines are healthy as well.


title: Rose

text: There are thousands of rose cultivars that people grow in gardens and on farms. The names used to describe the different types often refer to one species that is the main ancestor of that group, for example, Gallica roses are mostly descended from "Rosa gallica". Other groups have several different species among their ancestors. Hybrid Tea roses, Floribunda roses, and English roses are the most common in gardens today. They are of so many colours like red, yellow, orange, pink, purple and so on


title: Rose

text: In the Catholic religion, rose is a symbolic element of the Holy Rosary; it is reported that Fra Angelico, praying the rosary in the street, saw the Virgin with a group of Angels offering her


title: Rose

text: hymns and prayers while they were composing a crown of roses. Surprised by the vision, he interrupted the prayer and the angels stopped; when he prayed again he saw the angels recommencing to compose the crown of roses to offer to Mary.


title: Rose

text: Different colored roses were said to have different meanings. That era is passed, but these were the meanings:


title: Microsoft Word

text: Microsoft Word or MS Word (often called Word) is a graphical word processing program that users can type with. It is made by the computer company Microsoft. Its purpose is to allow users to type and save documents.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Many of the ideas and features in Microsoft Word came from Bravo, the first graphical writing program.


title: Microsoft Word

text: When it first came out, it was not very popular, and did not sell as well as other writing programs like WordPerfect.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Although it was not very popular when it came out, it had a feature called "WYSIWYG" (What You See Is What You Get), which meant that people can change the visual style of writing (e.g. bold, italics), by selecting and formatting text, when in other programs like WordPerfect, people had to add special 'codes' to change the style of writing. "WYSIWYG" is now a common feature of all computer writing programs.


title: Microsoft Word

text: There are versions for Microsoft Word for other operating systems as well as Microsoft Windows. New versions support fewer operating systems, although they always support Windows.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Without configuration the program saved the document in a proprietary file format, so other programs could not open it. When the user sent his document to a friend, the friend needed a copy of Microsoft Word to read the document. Then that friend would probably also save documents in the same secret format of Word. This gave Microsoft Word a dominant position.


title: Music

text: Music is a form of art that uses sound organised in time. Music is also a form of entertainment that puts sounds together in a way that people like, find interesting or dance to. Most music includes people singing with their voices or playing musical instruments, such as the piano, guitar, drums or violin.


title: Music

text: The word "music" comes from the Greek word ("mousike"), which means "(art) of the Muses". In Ancient Greece the Muses included the goddesses of music, poetry, art, and dance. Someone who makes music is known as a musician.


title: Music

text: Music is sound that has been organized by using rhythm, melody or harmony. If someone bangs saucepans while cooking, it makes noise. If a person bangs saucepans or pots in a rhythmic way, they are making a simple type of music.


title: Music

text: There is no simple definition of music which covers all cases. It is an art form, and opinions come into play. Music is whatever people think is music. A different approach is to list the qualities music must have, such as, sound which has rhythm, melody, pitch, timbre, etc.


title: Music

text: These and other attempts, do not capture all aspects of music, or leave out examples which definitely are music. Music is a special shared relationship between a person, the persons behavior, and a sounding object. Musical experience and the music, together, are called phenomena, and the activity of describing phenomena is called phenomenology.


title: Music

text: Even in the stone age people made music. The first music was probably made trying to imitate sounds and rhythms that occurred naturally. Human music may echo these phenomena using patterns, repetition and tonality. This kind of music is still here today. Shamans sometimes imitate sounds that are heard in nature. It may also serve as entertainment (games), or have practical uses, like attracting animals when hunting.


title: Music

text: Some animals also can use music. Songbirds use song to protect their territory, or to attract a mate. Monkeys have been seen beating hollow logs. This may, of course, also serve to defend the territory.


title: Music

text: The first musical instrument used by humans was probably the voice. The human voice can make many different kinds of sounds. The larynx (voice box) is like a wind instrument.


title: Music

text: The oldest known Neanderthal hyoid bone with the modern human form was found in 1983, indicating that the Neanderthals had language, because the hyoid supports the voice box in the human throat.


title: Music

text: Most likely the first rhythm instruments or percussion instruments involved the clapping of hands, stones hit together, or other things that are useful to keep a beat. There are finds of this type that date back to the paleolithic. Some of these are ambiguous, as they can be used either as a tool or a musical instrument.


title: Music

text: The oldest flute ever discovered may be the Divje Babe flute, found in the Slovenian cave Divje Babe I in 1995. It is not certain that it is really a flute. The item in question is a piece of the femur of a young cave bear, and is about 43,000 years old. However, whether it is a musical instrument or just a bone that got chewed on is an ongoing debate.


title: Music

text: In 2008, archaeologists discovered a bone flute in the Hohle Fels cave near Ulm, Germany. The five-holed flute has a V-shaped mouthpiece and is made from a vulture wing bone. The discovery is the oldest confirmed find of any musical instrument in history. Other flutes were also found in the cave. This flute was found next to the Venus of Hohle Fels and a short distance from the oldest known human carving. When they announced their discovery in 2009, the scientists suggested that the find showed that there was a well-established musical tradition when humans colonized Europe.


title: Music

text: The oldest known wooden pipes were discovered near Greystones, Ireland, in 2004. A wood-lined pit contained a group of six flutes made from yew wood, between 30 and 50 cm long, tapered at one end, but without any finger holes. They may once have been strapped together.


title: Music

text: In 1986 several bone flutes were found in Jiahu in Henan Province, China. They date to about 6,000 BC. They have between 5 and 8 holes each and were made from the hollow bones of a bird, the Red-crowned Crane. At the time of the discovery, one was still playable. The bone flute plays both the five- or seven-note scale of Xia Zhi and six-note scale of Qing Shang of the ancient Chinese musical system.


title: Music

text: It is not known what the earliest human music was like. Some architecture and paintings are thousands of years old, but old music could not survive until people learned to write it down. The only way we can guess about early music is by looking at very old paintings that show people playing musical instruments, or by finding instruments in archaeological digs (digging underground to find old things). The earliest piece of music that was ever written down and that has not been lost was discovered on a tablet written in Hurrian, a language spoken in and around northern Mesopotamia (where Iraq is today), from about 1500 BC.


title: Music

text: Another surviving piece of early written music was a round called "Sumer Is Icumen In". It was written down by a monk around the year 1250. Much of the music in the Middle Ages (roughly 450-1420) was folk music played by working people who wanted to sing or dance. When people played instruments, they were usually playing for dancers. However, most of the music that was written down was for the Catholic church. This music was written for monks to sing in church. It is called Chant (or Gregorian chant).


title: Music

text: In the Renaissance (roughly 1400–1550) there was a lot of music, and many composers wrote music that has survived so that it can be performed, played or sung today. Many new types of art and music was made during this time.


title: Music

text: Some music was written for use in church services (sacred music) by the Italian composer Giovanni da Palestrina (1525–1594). In Palestrina's music, many singers sing together (this is called a choir). There was also plenty of music not written for the church, such as happy dance music and romantic love songs. Popular instruments during the Renaissance included the viols (a string instrument played with a bow), lutes (a plucked stringed instrument that is a little like a guitar), and the virginal, a small, quiet keyboard instrument.


title: Music

text: The Baroque (roughly 1600–1740) was a Western cultural era. It emphasised drama and splendor in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music. In music, the term 'Baroque' applies to the final period of dominance of imitative counterpoint, where different voices and instruments echo each other but at different pitches, sometimes inverting the echo, and even reversing thematic material.


title: Music

text: The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The upper class also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. In similar profusions of detail, art, music, architecture, and literature inspired each other in the Baroque cultural movement as artists explored what they could create from repeated and varied patterns. Some traits and aspects of Baroque paintings that differentiate this style from others are the abundant amount of details, often bright polychromy, less realistic faces of subjects, and an overall sense of awe, which was one of the goals in Baroque art.


title: Music

text: The word baroque probably derives from the ancient Portuguese noun "barroco" which is a pearl that is not round but of unpredictable and elaborate shape. Hence, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is "elaborate", with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.


title: Music

text: In western music, the classical period means music from about 1750 to 1825. It was the time of composers like Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Orchestras became bigger, and composers often wrote longer pieces of music called symphonies that had several sections (called movements). Some movements of a symphony were loud and fast; other movements were quiet and sad. The form of a piece of music was very important at this time. Music had to have a nice 'shape'. They often used a structure which was called sonata form.


title: Music

text: Another important type of music was the string quartet, which is a piece of music written for two violins, a viola, and a violoncello. Like symphonies, string quartet music had several sections. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven each wrote many famous string quartets.


title: Music

text: The piano was invented during this time. Composers liked the piano, because it could be used to play dynamics (getting louder or getting softer). Other popular instruments included the violin, the violoncello, the flute, the clarinet, and the oboe.


title: Music

text: The 19th century is called the Romantic period. Composers were particularly interested in conveying their emotions through music. An important instrument from the Romantic period was the piano. Some composers, such as Frederic Chopin wrote subdued, expressive, quietly emotional piano pieces. Often music described a feeling or told a story using sounds. Other composers, such as Franz Schubert wrote songs for a singer and a piano player called Lied (the German word for "song"). These Lieder (plural of Lied) told stories by using the lyrics (words) of the song and by the imaginative piano accompaniments. Other composers, like Richard Strauss, and Franz Liszt created narratives and told stories using only music, which is called a tone poem. Composers, such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms used the piano to play loud, dramatic, strongly emotional music.


title: Music

text: Many composers began writing music for bigger orchestras, with as many as 100 instruments. It was the period of "Nationalism" (the feeling of being proud of one's country) when many composers made music using folksong or melodies from their country. Lots of famous composers lived at this time such as Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Frederic Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Richard Wagner.


title: Music

text: From about 1900 onwards is called the "modern period". Many 20th century composers wanted to compose music that sounded different from the Classical and Romantic music. Modern composers searched for new ideas, such as using new instruments, different forms, different sounds, or different harmonies.


title: Music

text: The composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) wrote pieces which were atonal (meaning that they did not sound as if they were in any clear musical key). Later, Schoenberg invented a new system for writing music called twelve-tone system. Music written with the twelve-tone system sounds strange to some, but is mathematical in nature, often making sense only after careful study. Pure twelve-tone music was popular among academics in the fifties and sixties, but some composers such as Benjamin Britten use it today, when it is necessary to get a certain feel.


title: Music

text: One of the most important 20th-century composers, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), wrote music with very complicated (difficult) chords (groups of notes that are played together) and rhythms. Some composers thought music was getting too complicated and so they wrote Minimalist pieces which use very simple ideas. In the 1950s and 1960s, composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen experimented with electronic music, using electronic circuits, amplifiers and loudspeakers. In the 1970s, composers began using electronic synthesizers and musical instruments from rock and roll music, such as the electric guitar. They used these new instruments to make new sounds.


title: Music

text: Composers writing in the 1990s and the 2000s, such as John Adams (born 1947) and James MacMillan (born 1959) often use a mixture of all these ideas, but they like to write tonal music with easy tunes as well.


title: Music

text: Music can be produced electronically. This is most commonly done by computers, keyboards, electric guitars and disk tables. They can mimic traditional instruments, and also produce very different sounds. 21st-century electronic music is commonly made with computer programs and hardware mixers.


title: Music

text: Jazz is a type of music that was invented around 1900 in New Orleans in the south of the USA. There were many black musicians living there who played a style of music called blues music. Blues music was influenced by African music (because the black people in the United States had come to the United States as slaves. They were taken from Africa by force). Blues music was a music that was played by singing, using the harmonica, or the acoustic guitar. Many blues songs had sad lyrics about sad emotions (feelings) or sad experiences, such as losing a job, a family member dying, or having to go to jail (prison).


title: Music

text: Jazz music mixed together blues music with European music. Some black composers such as Scott Joplin were writing music called ragtime, which had a very different rhythm from standard European music, but used notes that were similar to some European music. Ragtime was a big influence on early jazz, called Dixieland jazz. Jazz musicians used instruments such as the trumpet, saxophone, and clarinet were used for the tunes (melodies), drums for percussion and plucked double bass, piano, banjo and guitar for the background rhythm (rhythmic section). Jazz is usually improvised: the players make up (invent) the music as they play. Even though jazz musicians are making up the music, jazz music still has rules; the musicians play a series of chords (groups of notes) in order.


title: Music

text: Jazz music has a swinging rhythm. The word "swing" is hard to explain. For a rhythm to be a "swinging rhythm" it has to feel natural and relaxed. Swing rhythm is not even like a march. There is a long-short feel instead of a same-same feel. A "swinging rhythm" also gets the people who are listening excited, because they like the sound of it. Some people say that a "swinging rhythm" happens when all the jazz musicians start to feel the same pulse and energy from the song. If a jazz band plays very well together, people will say "that is a swinging jazz band" or "that band really swings well."


title: Music

text: Jazz influenced other types of music like the Western art music from the 1920s and 1930s. Art music composers such as George Gershwin wrote music that was influenced by jazz. Jazz music influenced pop music songs. In the 1930s and 1940s, many pop music songs began using chords or melodies from jazz songs. One of the best known jazz musicians was Louis Armstrong (1900–1971).


title: Music

text: "Pop" music is a type of "popular" music that many people like to listen to. The term "pop music" can be used for all kinds of music that was written to be popular. The word "pop music" was used from about 1880 onwards, when a type of music called music was popular.


title: Music

text: Modern pop music grew out of 1950's rock and roll, (for example Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard) and rockabilly (for example Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly). In the 1960s, The Beatles became a famous pop music group. In the 1970s, other styles of music were mixed with pop music, such as funk and soul music. Pop music generally has a heavy (strong) beat, so that it is good for dancing. Pop singers normally sing with microphones that are plugged into an amplifier and a loudspeaker.


title: Music

text: "Musical notation" is the way music is written down. Music needs to be written down in order to be saved and remembered for future performances. In this way composers (people who write music) can tell others how to play the musical piece as it was meant to be played.


title: Music

text: Solfège (sometimes called solfa) is the way tones are named. It was made in order to give a name to the several tones and pitches. For example, the eight basic notes "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do" are just the names of the eight notes that confirm the major scale.


title: Music

text: Music can be written in several ways. When it is written on a staff (like in the example shown), the pitches (tones) and their duration are represented by symbols called notes. Notes are put on the lines and in the spaces between the lines. Each position says which tone must be played. The higher the note is on the staff, the higher the pitch of the tone. The lower the notes are, the lower the pitch. The duration of the notes (how long they are played for) is shown by making the note "heads" black or white, and by giving them stems and flags.


title: Music

text: Music can also be written with letters, naming them as in the solfa "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do" or representing them by letters. The next table shows how each note of the solfa is represented in the Standard Notation:


title: Music

text: The Standard Notation was made to simplify the lecture of music notes, although it is mostly used to represent chords and the names of the music scales.


title: Music

text: These ways to represent music ease the way a person reads music. There are more ways to write and represent music, but they are less known and may be more complicated.


title: Music

text: People can enjoy music by listening to it. They can go to concerts to hear musicians perform. Classical music is usually performed in concert halls, but sometimes huge festivals are organized in which it is performed outside, in a field or stadium, like pop festivals. People can listen to music on CD's, Computers, iPods, television, the radio, cassette/record-players and even mobile phones.


title: Music

text: There is so much music today, in elevators, shopping malls, and stores, that it often becomes a background sound that we do not really hear.


title: Music

text: People can learn to play an instrument. Probably the most common for complete beginners is the piano or keyboard, the guitar, or the recorder (which is certainly the cheapest to buy). After they have learnt to play scales, play simple tunes and read the simplest musical notation, then they can think about which instrument for further development. They should choose an instrument that is practical for their size. For example, a very short child cannot play a full size double bass, because the double bass is over five feet high. People should choose an instrument that they enjoy playing, because playing regularly is the only way to get better. Finally, it helps to have a good teacher.


title: Music

text: Anyone can make up their own pieces of music. It is not difficult to compose simple songs or melodies (tunes). It's easier for people who can play an instrument themselves. All it takes is experimenting with the sounds that an instrument makes. Someone can make up a piece that tells a story, or just find a nice tune and think about ways it can be changed each time it is repeated. The instrument might be someone's own voice.


title: Greek mythology

text: Greek mythology is a large collection of stories, started in Ancient Greece, about the beginning of the world, and the lives and adventures of gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines.


title: Greek mythology

text: The gods and goddesses in Greek mythology have special parts in the world. For instance, Zeus is the god of the sky, Poseidon is the god of the sea and Hephaestus is the god of metal work, forging and fire. They can make themselves invisible to humans and move to any place in a very short amount of time. Gods and goddesses also never get sick and can only be hurt by very unusual causes. This is called being immortal. The king of the gods was Zeus. The gods were children of the Titans such as Kronos and Rhea.


title: Greek mythology

text: Greek mythology has thirteen main gods known as the Twelve Olympians plus Hades, the brother of Zeus. They were Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Hephaestus, Dionysus, Athena, Artemis, Apollo, Ares, Demeter, Aphrodite and Hermes. Before them there were the twelve Titans.


title: Greek mythology

text: The Greeks believed that the sun was pulled across the sky by a "chariot" driven by the god, Apollo, (Or Helios, as some say, the titan who drove the 'sun chariot' across the sky before his successor Apollo) and he himself was the god of archery, poetry, and Oracles. Every day, Apollo would drive the "Sun Chariot" across the sky.


title: Greek mythology

text: The Ancient Greeks believed that in the beginning, the world was in a state of nothingness which they called Chaos. Suddenly, from light, came Gaia (Mother Earth) and from her came Uranus (the sky) along with other old gods (called primordials) like Pontus (the primordial god of the oceans). Gaia and Uranus had 12 children, the Titans. The most important of the 12 children were Kronos and Rhea.


title: Greek mythology

text: Gaia gave birth to monsters called cyclops and monsters called Hecatoncheires (the hundred handed ones). Uranus, disgusted by the monsters, threw them in Tartarus. Gaia was angered by Uranus and wanted revenge on him. Gaia used her son Kronos, who chopped off Uranus' genitals. Kronos then threw Uranus into the ocean. From the blood of his genitals, came the goddess of love and beauty—Aphrodite.


title: Greek mythology

text: Kronos married his sister Rhea and gave birth to 6 children, who were called the gods. Kronos, who was afraid of a prophecy delivered to him which stated that one day his children would cut him up, swallowed each of his children the second they were born. Rhea did not like this, so she saved Zeus and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. Zeus was raised by Amaltheia. In some versions of the story, Amaltheia was a nymph. In other versions she was a goat. Zeus grew up in a mountain cave in Crete. When he was old enough, he tricked Kronos into drinking a mixture of wine and mustard with the help of Metis. Metis later had a child with Zeus named Athena. Kronos vomited up the rest of the gods, who, being immortal, had been growing up completely undigested in Kronos' stomach. Zeus and other gods then had a big war with the Titans. Zeus won with the help of the hundred handed ones and the cyclops. After they won the war Zeus cut Kronos into pieces and threw him into Tartarus.


title: Greek mythology

text: Zeus was, from then on, the leader of the gods. Poseidon took over the oceans. Hades took over the Underworld. Zeus married his sister Hera and crowned her Queen of Olympus.


title: Care Bears

text: The Care Bears are a very successful toy franchise from the 1980s. Over forty million of these stuffed teddy bears, made with a variety of colours, were sold from 1983 to 1987. Each Bear had a name, a job, and a symbol tied to it. For example, Funshine Bear helps people wake up, and has a sun on his stomach.


title: Care Bears

text: The toys were first made as characters on cards in 1981; the original artwork was done by James Lewis. Later, other toys called the Care Bear Cousins were introduced.


title: Care Bears

text: They also gave way to three animated movies for the cinema in the mid-1980s. A related TV series from DIC and, later, Canada's Nelvana Limited came out at almost that same time.


title: Care Bears

text: Recently, Care Bear toys have been brought back in a new edition for the twenty-first century. As part of this comeback, the Bears have appeared in their first two DVD movies (both computer-animated), as well as a few video games.


title: Political parties in the United States

text: In the United States of America, there has usually only been two main political parties. But there are more than a 100 different varieties with varying viewpoints of the two main parties. Since the 1860s, the two main parties have been the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has the most seats in the House of Representatives while the Republicans and Democrats split the Senate at 50 Senators each. The Vice President, a Democrat, holds a tie breaking vote, in the United States Senate.


title: Political parties in the United States

text: The United States has two major political parties: the Democrats and the Republicans. But there are other parties that aren't as represented by the United States government and are usually highly suppressed, underfunded or misrepresented. Usually these smaller parties aren’t as well known. These major parties have a duopoly, meaning that they share almost all the political power in the country. Most constitutional republic countries have more than two parties.


title: Political parties in the United States

text: The three largest parties aside from the two main political parties are the Libertarian Party, Green Party of the United States, and the Constitution party in respective order.


title: Political parties in the United States

text: The Democratic Party was started in 1828 as a pro-slavery party and the first President was Andrew Jackson in 1829. However, through the economic resurgence after the Great Depression in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the Democratic party became a proponent of racial equality. Many 20th century United States Presidents such as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and 21st century presidents such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden are Democrats. They have 48 out of 100 seats in the U.S. Senate (independents caucusing with the democratic party hold two seats in the U.S. senate) and 222 out of 435 seats in the House of Representatives. 24 out of 50 state governors are also Democrats. The party generally promotes liberalism and is often classed as a center-left to left-wing party. Currently, the party has 60 million registered voters across America.


title: Political parties in the United States

text: The party's philosophy of modern liberalism advocates social and economic equality. It seeks to provide government intervention and regulation in the economy. These interventions, such as the introduction of social programs, anti-gun laws, support for labor unions, affordable college tuitions, moves toward universal health care and equal opportunity, consumer protection and environmental protection form the core of the party's economic policy.


title: Political parties in the United States

text: The Republican Party was started in 1854 as an anti-slavery party and its first President was Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Others include Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump. In the Nixon years, there was a shift to appeal to the implicit racial biases of white voters that did not like the civil rights movement of the 1960's in what is called the southern strategy. This strategy created the appearance of equity while ignoring minorities in the process. 26 out of 50 states have a Republican governor. It has around 55 million registered voters across America. Currently, the Republican Party is identified as conservative.


title: Political parties in the United States

text: The party philosophy centers around social and economic independence, and a capitalist economic system. It is also known for its anti-abortion efforts, pro-gun laws, anti-regulatory policy, and reduction of government intervention in the economy as well as being in support of privatized health care. The party believes in lower taxes, less social programs, and personal liberty.


title: Political parties in the United States

text: There are over 420 registered political parties in the United States of America, with many different blends of political viewpoints. However, there are only two nationally recognized political parties, the Republicans and Democrats. Most of the other parties fall under those two political parties with variations, or under other ideological umbrellas, like Progressive, Libertarian, Conservative, Socialist, Communist, etc. They are either underfunded or undersupported and highly suppressed. Nearly 44% of politically active citizens prefer to identify as Independent because of this suppression. It is less common to achieve political influence in modern government functions, but some lawmakers such as Joe Lieberman may retire their parties with their careers.


title: Pentagram

text: A pentagram is a five-pointed star, with all lines the same length and all angles the same. A 'pentangle', 'star pentagon', or 'pentalpha' means the same thing. It is a type of pentagon.


title: Pentagram

text: The word "pentacle" originally meant 'any symbol that protects against evil spirits'. There are many of such symbols, only a few of which include a pentagram. During the modern age of Wicca, the word 'pentacle' acquired a second definition, due to sounding similar to the word 'pentagram', and the fact that wiccan pentacles use a pentagram. That second definition of 'pentacle' is 'a circumscribed pentagram', which means 'a pentagram drawn inside a circle so that the points of the pentagram touch the circle'.


title: Pentagram

text: In ancient times, the pentagram was used as a Christian symbol. It stood for the five wounds that Jesus Christ received during his crucifixion (the nails in each hand and foot, and the spear wound in his side).


title: Pentagram

text: In Taoism, a pentagram shows how the five classical oriental elements (earth, water, wood, fire, and metal) are related.


title: Pentagram

text: Today, the pentacle, commonly mistaken as a pentagram, is the most commonly used symbol of Wicca. Some post-Gardnerian wiccans, imitating Taoism, associate the five points of the pentagram with the four classical Greek elements (fire, water, earth, and air) and spirit.


title: Pentagram

text: Some Satanists, especially members of the Church of Satan, use an upside-down pentacle as a symbol for their religion. The Church of Satan's official symbol is an upside-down pentacle with a goat head inside, called the "Sigil of Baphomet." (A 'sigil' is a symbol of a supernatural being). It was originally the influential 1800s French occultist Eliphas Levi who associated the pentagram with the goat-headed baphomet, by drawing a pentagram on the baphomet's forehead. Anton LaVey, who created the Church of Satan in 1966, took the idea from Levi.


title: Pentagram

text: In "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," a 14th century romance story, the pentagram is mentioned as a symbol for Gawain's good character and truth.


title: Pentagram

text: More recently, the meaning of the pentagram was discussed in "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. According to the book, the pentagram actually belonged to the ancient religion of Pagan Sun Worship, and was tied to the female planet Venus: every 8 years Venus traces a perfect pentagram across the sky. The book says that the pentagram was a symbol for the sacred female, but was later taken by Christianity and said to mean the devil in order to destroy beliefs that females were sacred.


title: Virat Kohli

text: Virat Kohli first came into the limelight in 2008, when he led the Indian U-19 cricket team to victory in 2008 U-19 Cricket World Cup He soon made his debut for the Indian team in August 2008. during a ODI match against in Sri Lanka. Virat also became one of the valuable Indian captain in Test cricket with 27 test wins, 12 overseas test wins and highest winning percentage as captain in both Tests and ODIs. Kohli was ranked eighth in ESPN's list of world's most famous sportspeople in 2016. Virat is the only current player to have a stand named after him in Delhi Firoz Shah Kotla stadium to honour his immaculate contributions to Indian cricket.


title: Virat Kohli

text: He started dating Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma in 2013. They got married on 11 December 2017 in Florence, Italy. The couple had their first child, a daughter in January 2021.


title: Basketball

text: Basketball is a team sport where one team, usually consisting of five players in each team, play against each other on a rectangular court. The objective is to get the ball through a hoop mounted high on a backboard on the opponent's side of the court, while preventing the opponent from shooting it into your team's hoop. It is a very popular sport worldwide, played with a round and usually orange(orange-brown) ball that bounces. Basketball players mainly use skills such as dribbling, shooting, running, and jumping. Each made basket is worth two points, while a basket made from beyond the three-point line is worth three points. If a player gets into too much physical contact, they may be given free throws which are worth one point each. The game typically lasts for four-quarters and the team with the most points at the end of the four-quarters win the game. If the score is tied at the end of the game, there will be additional play time, called overtime, to allow one team to win the match.


title: Basketball

text: The game is played between men's teams or between women's teams. Basketball has been played in the Summer Olympic Games since 1936. The shot clock rule started in 1954 for professional basketball. The first basketball game took place in 1892, where the court was half the size of what it is today. In 1891 the game was invented by James Naismith.


title: Basketball

text: In early December 1891, James Naismith (1861–1939), a Canadian physical education teacher at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, invented an indoor game called basketball. He invented the sport to keep his students from becoming bored during the winter. Naismith wrote the basic rules and then nailed a peach basket onto a 20-foot tall pole. Unlike modern basketball hoops, the bottom of the peach-basket was still there, so after a point was scored, somebody had to get the ball out of the basket with a long stick. Over time, people made a hole at the bottom of the basket so the ball could go through more easily. The first game of basketball was played at the International Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Springfield, Massachusetts. The score of the first game of basketball ever played was 1-0. There is a sculpture in Springfield, outside where the first game was held. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is also in Springfield.


title: Basketball

text: For that first game of basketball in 1891, Naismith used two half-bushel peach baskets as goals, which gave the sport its name. The students were enthusiastic. After much running and shooting, William R. Chase made a midcourt shot, which was the only score in that historic contest. Word spread about the newly invented game, and numerous associations wrote Naismith for a copy of the rules, which were published in the January 15, 1892, issue of the "Triangle", the YMCA Training School's campus paper.


title: Basketball

text: Since the rules had not been formally written, there was no maximum number of players then, unlike today. This also meant that there were no set rules to the game; Naismith only observed how it was played and changed the rules accordingly.


title: Basketball

text: The aim of basketball is to score more points than the other team, by making the ball in the basket. Players on one team try to stop players on the other team from scoring. Baskets can be worth 1, 2, or 3 points. Each normal score is worth two points; however, if a player throws the ball into the hoop from behind the large arched line on the court, called the "3-point line," the score is worth three points. You get points by "shooting" (throwing or dropping) the ball into the opponents' basket. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.


title: Basketball

text: The ball is moved forward by shooting, passing (throwing or handing off) or dribbling it. The ball may not be carried by a player who is walking or running without dribbling it. If this rule is violated, it is called a travel.


title: Basketball

text: The court, where the game is played, is a rectangle, and at both end lines there is a goal called a "hoop" in the shape of a circle basket with the bottom cut out.


title: Basketball

text: Basketball is played with two teams, with 5 players from each team on the court at one time. The maximum number of players on the bench differs by the league. In international play, a maximum of 7 players is allowed on the bench, resulting in a roster of 12 players. The NBA has 13-player rosters; college and high school teams have 15-player rosters. When a player wants to substitute for another player on the court, they let the score bench know. The referees will signal for the player waiting to come into the court. The player that was in the game comes off the court and the player that was sitting on the bench goes inside the game. This is called a substitution. In regional matches, in some areas, a minimum of 3 players are required to be on the bench. In India, there might be leeway in the number depending on the category of the tournament you're playing in.


title: Basketball

text: A game of basketball is made up of four different quarters, each ten (or in the National Basketball Association, 12) minutes long. In the NCAA, or National Collegiate Athletic Association, there are 2 20 minute halves. At the start of every game the referee throws the basketball up in the air, and one player from each team tries to hit it to their teammates, that is called a "jump ball."


title: Basketball

text: At the start of each quarter the team who has the possession arrow pointing towards their hoop gets the ball. Then the arrow is switched, and the next team gets the ball next quarter.


title: Basketball

text: After four-quarters, the team who scores the most points wins. If the two teams score the same number of points, there is a five-minute "overtime" to see who can score more points. "Overtime" can be played over and over until one team finally scores more points.


title: Basketball

text: If a player does something illegal in the game, it is called a "foul." If a player fouls someone on the other team who is shooting the basketball, the player who was fouled gets to shoot "free throws" from the "foul line." A free throw is a shot that no one is allowed to try to block. A free throw is shot from the straight line in front of the hoop. Each successful free throw is worth one point.


title: Basketball

text: If a player fouls an opponent who is not shooting, the other team gets the ball, and can throw it in bounds from the sideline. Players can do three things with the ball: "dribble" (bounce) the ball, "pass" the ball to a teammate, or "shoot" the ball at the hoop. The player with the ball tries to keep the ball and not let the other team get it.


title: Basketball

text: The ball can't be kicked or hit with the fist. If this is violated, the other team gets possession of the ball and gets to throw it in from the nearest out of bounds area.


title: Basketball

text: Once a player commits five fouls, he is no longer allowed to play in the game, and a player on the bench must go in the game immediately. If a team commits four fouls, the opposing team gets to shoot a free throw on any next foul that doesn't involve shooting. (Depending on the league).


title: Basketball

text: In a game of basketball, there are a number of officials who are not from either team, who are there to help. Officials are important to the game, and help it run efficiently. Here is a list of some of these people:


title: Basketball

text: Fans and media in North America will often use "referee" to describe all on-court officials, whether their formal titles are "referee", "umpire", or "crew chief".


title: Basketball

text: There are some basketball terms that players have to understand when playing the game. Here are some terms:


title: Basketball

text: In professional basketball teams, each player has a position. A position is a job or role that a player has to take part in to play the game. If everyone is doing their job correctly, the team is usually successful.


title: Basketball

text: There are many types of basketball. Some are for people with disabilities, others are played more by a specific group, some are played using only half the court, and some are for when there are fewer players.


title: Basketball

text: This is the most popular "pick up game" variation of basketball. Pick up games are when teams are chosen on the court instead of having official teams. Due to there being no referee, this more casual game has more relaxed rules than official games. Instead of 5 players, there are only three players on each team, hence the name.


title: Basketball

text: While the exact rules vary from place to place, there are several common rules typically found in most games, including:


title: Basketball

text: There are officially sponsored 3 on 3 tournaments, though the game is mostly played without an official league.


title: Basketball

text: Twenty-one (21) is a variation of basketball that does not include teams. It is often played with odd-numbers of players or when there are too few players for 3 on 3 games.


title: Basketball

text: The object of 21 is to score "exactly" 21 points. Players keep track of their own scores and call out their points after making a basket. All players play defense against all other players and compete for the rebound on a miss.


title: Basketball

text: When a player makes a shot, he or she scores 2 points and is then awarded a chance to score an additional 3 points by attempting a series of free-throws. If a player makes a free-throw, he or she is awarded an additional point and an additional free-throw. If a player makes three straight free-throws they are then given the ball a the top of the key and the other players may then defend.


title: Basketball

text: One special rule is that if a player gets 20 points and then misses a free-throw, or scores 17 points and then makes all three free-throws, their score is set back to 15. This is because their next basket would put them over 21 points, and the object of the game is to get exactly 21.