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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve%27s_Lava_Chicken] \| [TOKENS: 750]
Contents Steve's Lava Chicken "Steve's Lava Chicken" is a song performed by Jack Black from the soundtrack for A Minecraft Movie (2025). It is used as a jingle for a scene where Black's character in the film, Steve, cooks a live chicken by pouring lava onto it. The song was co-written by Black and the film's director Jared Hess, and is 34 seconds long. The song broke several records—particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom—as the shortest song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart respectively. It also charted in multiple other countries. It has been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America and silver by the British Phonographic Industry. Background and release "Steve's Lava Chicken" is used in a scene in A Minecraft Movie where Steve—a character portrayed in the film by Black—showcases a contraption he made that cooks live chickens in lava. The subject of the song is the cooked chicken resulting from the contraption. The song itself is about 34 seconds long, and was co-written by Black and the film's director Jared Hess. The soundtrack for A Minecraft Movie, including "Steve's Lava Chicken", was released on March 28, 2025, through WaterTower Music. A 50-second long clip from the film featuring the song, labeled by WaterTower as its official music video, was released on April 9, 2025. An EP by Black, I...Am Steve, featuring an extended version of "Steve's Lava Chicken" along with other songs from the film's soundtrack, was released on April 18, 2025. The extended version is 1 minute and 15 seconds long. A remix of the "Steve's Lava Chicken" instrumental was added to Minecraft in June 2025 as a music disc, with players able to obtain the disc by killing a chicken jockey. Commercial performance In the United States, "Steve's Lava Chicken" received over 2.5 million streams on the week of the film's release, a 1,973% increase in streams from the week prior to its release. The song later debuted at number 78 on the Hot 100 for the week dated May 3, 2025, breaking the record for the shortest song in the chart's history, surpassing Kid Cudi's "Beautiful Trip", which is 37 seconds long. "Steve's Lava Chicken" was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in September 2025. In the United Kingdom, "Steve's Lava Chicken" peaked at number nine on the UK Singles Chart on May 2, 2025 ‒ for the week ending date May 8, 2025 ‒ during its third week on the chart. It broke the record for the shortest song to ever appear in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart. The previous record holder was "The Ladies' Bras", a song by Jonny Trunk and Duncan Wisbey that was 36 seconds long. The song became Black's highest-charting song in Britain, surpassing "Peaches", a song from the soundtrack for The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023). It was certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry in July 2025. Critical reception In a list article discussing the best and worst things to happen in 2025, Pitchfork placed the commercial performance records set by "Steve's Lava Chicken" as one of the low points of the year, assigning it a 1.9 out of 10 score on the scale. Charts Certifications ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft_Monday] \| [TOKENS: 1410]
Contents Minecraft Monday Minecraft Monday was a weekly esports tournament for the sandbox video game Minecraft. It was created by the internet personality Keemstar, known for his content on social media drama and the host of the tournament Fortnite Fridays, upon repeated suggestions from meme YouTuber Grandayy. The event featured online creators, invited based upon their popularity rather than gameplay skill, in teams of two, competing to score the most points across a series of minigames of various genres. The winning team was awarded $10,000 USD. The tournament debuted on June 24, 2019, and ended after its server was breached during the 14th event on October 7, 2019. Minecraft Monday was credited with drawing renewed attention to Minecraft for its roster of popular creators, which included Fortnite player Ninja, YouTuber PewDiePie, and makeup vlogger James Charles, but caused community conflict due to the mixture of experienced and inexperienced Minecraft players. The cast allowed one player, Technoblade, to gain recognition in the Minecraft community after winning 4 out of the 14 events, and placing as the best-scoring individual in 7 of them. Despite social media updates by Keemstar throughout 2020 regarding a revival, the tournament did not return after its hacking. It inspired another Minecraft tournament, MC Championship, by YouTuber Smajor1995 and the group Noxcrew. Format Minecraft Monday was a competitive tournament in Minecraft, a sandbox video game developed by Mojang Studios. Players were divided into teams of two and would compete to score the highest points. Although the first two events only featured the player versus player (PvP) battle royale mode Hunger Games, later events introduced various other minigames to test different skillsets. The revised gamelist, which changed each week, included modes such as Bingo and Capture the Flag. The event was hosted weekly on Mondays and was broadcast live by its players, most often to Twitch; the event's host, UMG Gaming, also livestreamed the events. $10,000 USD, sponsored by the gaming drink mix G Fuel,[‡ 1] and later also the Minecraft server host Apex Hosting,[‡ 2] was awarded to both the winning team and a random viewer. During the event's lifetime, the organizers also hosted a public Minecraft server under the IP mcmondays.com. History Minecraft Monday was created by Keemstar, a controversial internet personality known for his videos about social media drama, after the meme YouTuber Grandayy had spent over a year pushing for him to pursue the idea. Keemstar already hosted the event Fortnite Fridays, and would later launch a third competition, Warzone Wednesday. Like Keemstar's other tournaments, players were invited on basis of online following rather than gameplay skill, in order to attract viewership. The first event on June 24, 2019, was seen live by over one million viewers; according to Dexerto, the Fortnite player Ninja peaked at 400,000 concurrent viewers on his Twitch livestream, before he prematurely quit during the fourth game after dying quickly in every round. The participation of several prominent creators – including Ninja, PewDiePie, and James Charles – allowed Minecraft YouTuber Technoblade to rise in prominence, after he consecutively won the first two weeks of the tournament. Technoblade's winning streak ended in Week 3, which was won by streamers Traves and Cscoop. Conflict generated within the tournament's community due to organizational issues; some viewers considered the teammatching unbalanced due to the participation of both veteran and beginner Minecraft players, and some criticized the minigame selection. Technoblade would win the tournament twice more, in Weeks 6 and 10.[‡ 3] YouTuber Skeppy won with teammate BadBoyHalo in Weeks 5 and 7, and again with Vikkstar123 in Week 9.[‡ 3] A duo consisting of streamers xQc and M0xxy won the tournament back-to-back in Weeks 12 and 13. At the end of the 13th week, YouTuber MrBeast collaborated with Keemstar during Hunger Games to place a $15,000 bounty on Technoblade, which was taken by Bajan Canadian. The Minecraft Monday server was breached during Week 14 on October 7, 2019. Whilst the tournament was ongoing, hackers griefed buildings and the minigame arenas; Minecraft Monday, as well as Fortnite Fridays, were subsequently placed on hiatus. Keemstar complained on Twitter that they had been running Minecraft Monday on a "shoe-string budget" and had been cutting corners, but said that the tournament would return in November 2019. In May 2020, Keemstar's organization KeemPark posted a screenshot of a remade Minecraft Monday lobby, created in collaboration with Bajan Canadian and his developer. KeemPark stated the tournament would return within three weeks. Keemstar would tweet two months later that "Minecraft Monday is coming soon!",[‡ 4] but the event would ultimately not return. Legacy Writers credited Minecraft Monday with causing an increased attention towards Minecraft. Patricia Hernandez, a writer for Polygon, wrote that Minecraft Monday and other online projects, such as PewDiePie's playthrough of the game, caused a resurgence in the game's popularity. In an article for The Esports Observer, Max Miceli noted a significant increase in Twitch viewership for Minecraft as the event went on. While the game only rarely surpassed 500,000 hours watched a day prior to June 2019, the day of the first event reached 781,000 hours watched, and subsequent days surpassed one million. Esport Insider's Marloes Valentina Stella described Minecraft Monday as the second major competitive tournament in Minecraft. Unlike the largely unsuccessful partnership of Badlion Client and major esports organizer ESL around 2017 (the first major tournament series), Stella thought the roster of well-known internet creators made it "no surprise that Minecraft Monday [became] the most famous Minecraft tournament". Regardless, she attributed the event's closure to community conflict, the hacking during Week 14, and the controversial status of Keemstar. YouTuber Smajor1995, who played in the event, said he was inspired by Minecraft Monday to create the tournament MC Championship, which he organizes with the group Noxcrew. Smajor liked the idea of bringing creators together for a Minecraft event, but found Keemstar hard to work with. According to Gökhan Çakır for Dot Esports, MC Championship was able to fill the "gigantic gap" in the competitive Minecraft scene after Minecraft Monday's closure. List of winners Notes References Sources from Keemstar, UMG Gaming, event partners, or participants. In the text, these references are preceded by a double dagger (‡): External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aether_(mod)] \| [TOKENS: 451]
Contents The Aether (mod) The Aether is a Minecraft mod originally released by a team of six modders. The mod adds a new Heaven-like dimension to Minecraft, complete with new materials, mobs, dungeons and bosses. The mod was released on 22 July 2011 and received acclaim, with the lead developer being hired at Mojang Studios. A sequel to the mod was released in June 2013. Gameplay The Aether mod adds a new eponymous dimension to Minecraft. The dimension's pastel aesthetics and floating islands contrast the Nether, a dimension from the base game themed after Hell. The Aether is accessed by building, activating and going through the Aether portal, constructed in the same shape as the Nether portal but with different materials. The dimension is made out of islands floating in mid-air; falling down sends the player out of the dimension. Various friendly and hostile mobs can be encountered in the Aether. Overworld tools become obsolete in the Aether, requiring the player to make tools out of new materials found inside the dimension, effectively restarting the progression chain. The mod also adds accessories, which provide buffs to a player when placed in a specific inventory slot. Dungeons can be found in the Aether, containing a boss at the end that drops valuable items upon defeat. Development As of June 2013, the mod team had seven members: project lead Brandon "kingbdogz" Pearce, programmers Jaryt and Saspiron, artists Dark and Oscar Payn, composer Emile van Krieken and writer Liberty. In December 2021, The Aether was updated to support newer Minecraft versions. Reception Being one of the first large-scale mods for Minecraft, The Aether has received acclaim and is considered a classic. PCGamesN called the mod "one of Minecraft's most impressive historic mods". Various news outlets described the mod's themes as antithetical to the Nether. In January 2020, Pearce became a Mojang Studios employee. In June 2013, The Aether 2 was announced, a mod that aims to overhaul The Aether and add new content as well as a multiplayer party system, designed to make cooperative play more convenient. References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Minecraft:_Java_Edition] \| [TOKENS: 5709]
Contents Development of Minecraft: Java Edition The development of the 2011 sandbox game Minecraft spans over 16 years and multiple major updates. Originally started in May 2009 by Markus "Notch" Persson as a small personal project, the game quickly became popular on forums, prompting Persson to continue updating it. Over the course of its development, Minecraft's public beta amassed over 4 million sales by 7 November 2011. Minecraft would eventually release on 18 November 2011. After the full release in 2011, Minecraft has been receiving various updates that add new features into the game for no additional cost. After Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang Studios (formerly known as Mojang AB) in 2014, the pace of major update releases was briefly halted, before resuming the cycle in 2016. In 2017, after the unification of the console and mobile ports of the game, the original PC version of Minecraft was renamed to Minecraft: Java Edition. In 2024, annual updates were partially replaced by "game drops" that focus on smaller but more frequent additions. Outside of major and minor updates, preview builds named "snapshots" are available in the Minecraft Launcher and are released weekly. Certain versions and snapshots are unavailable to play via the launcher, with some considered lost and others archived online. Background Before creating Minecraft, Persson was a game developer at King, where he worked until March 2009. At King, he primarily developed browser games and learned several programming languages. During his free time, he prototyped his own games, often drawing inspiration from other titles, and was an active participant on the TIGSource forums for independent developers. Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, while continuing to work on his prototypes. As the profits from sales of Minecraft's public alpha version began overshadowing his day job wage, he resigned from jAlbum in 2010 in order to be able to work on the game full time. With the revenue generated from the game, Persson founded Mojang, a video game studio, alongside former colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. Following the full release, Persson transferred creative control of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten and began working on another project called 0x10c, though it was later abandoned. In 2014, Persson decided to sell Mojang, stating that he became exhausted with developing Minecraft due to the intense media attention and public pressure. After Microsoft purchased Mojang for $2.5 billion, he left the company alongside Porser and Manneh. Pre-release The first known versions of Minecraft, then known as Cave Game, were developed by Markus Persson in May 2009. The game world consisted of grass and cobblestone blocks, which could be placed and removed. The gameplay was inspired by Infiniminer and an earlier project of Persson, RubyDung. On 13 May, the first available footage of the game was released online via a YouTube video titled "Cave game tech test", uploaded by Persson himself. On 17 May, a more refined build of the game was published on the TIGSource forums. The game was renamed to Minecraft: Order of the Stone based on user feedback, later shortened to Minecraft, omitting the subtitle. Following Minecraft's release on TIGSource, Persson began updating the game based on the response from the forum users, with the subsequent builds later referred to as Minecraft Classic. Various branches of Classic have been released, such as Multiplayer Test and Survival Test, with the former implementing multiplayer capabilities into the game and the latter giving the player a health bar and adding hostile monsters, including zombies, skeletons and creepers. Ambient music tracks that play sparsely during the gameplay were added during Classic, composed by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, known professionally as C418, who became active on TIGSource in 2007 where he met Persson. Rosenfeld wanted to "make something organic and partly electronic, partly acoustic" for the music of Minecraft. The soundtrack's minimalistic style was also due to technical constraints, as he admitted the game "has a terrible sound engine." The game's soundtrack, Minecraft – Volume Alpha, would later be released in March 2011. On 7 May 2019, coinciding with Minecraft's 10th anniversary, a JavaScript recreation of Classic was made available to play online for free. Minecraft entered the Indev phase on 23 December 2009, which inherited features from Survival Test. Various features were added during this time, most notably paintings drawn by Swedish artist Kristoffer Zetterstrand. On 27 February 2010, Persson began experimenting with infinite worlds and started a new development branch called Infdev. Minecraft entered the Alpha phase on 30 June 2010. In a 2010 interview, Persson said "[...] Minecraft alpha is now, but I focused on just getting the engine written and making sure that the controls felt smooth." During the alpha stage, updates were frequent and sometimes released with no warning. Notable additions include redstone, a material capable of transmitting a signal used to change state of various blocks, such as opening doors and turning on lamps. Redstone is turing complete and has been used by players to create complex mechanisms, including computers. Released on 30 October 2010, Alpha v1.2.0 added various biomes to the world, such as deserts, forests and snowy tundras, as well as a hell-like dimension called the Nether, accessed through a player-made portal, composed mainly of lava and populated with dangerous monsters such as the fireball-shooting Ghasts. Minecraft entered the Beta phase on 20 December 2010, with Beta 1.0 introducing throwable eggs and leaf decay. The game's price was subsequently raised from €10 to €14.75. Throughout 2011, various features were added, such as beds, tameable wolves, maps, trapdoors and redstone-powered pistons. In January 2011, Minecraft had sold over 1 million copies. Beta 1.8, titled "Adventure Update", was released on September 14, 2011. The update reworked the world generation, adding new biomes, structures and terrain features, such as ravines. Villages were added, though they would not be populated until the next update. Player movement and combat was overhauled, giving the player the ability to sprint and inflict critical hits on enemies. A hunger bar was added; instead of food healing the player directly, it now replenishes the hunger bar, with player slowly healing when the bar is full and taking damage when it is empty. The update also adds creative mode, a game mode that removes survival aspects of the game, making the player invincible, able to fly and giving unlimited access to blocks, similar to Minecraft Classic. Initially, Adventure Update was going to be released in Beta 1.7, but was later delayed due to the amount of content to Beta 1.8 and then subsequently split between two updates, Beta 1.8 and Beta 1.9, the latter becoming 1.0.0. In November 2011, Minecraft had sold over 4 million copies. Release and subsequent updates On November 18, 2011, during MineCon 2011, the first full version of Minecraft was officially released, titled "Adventure Update: Part II". It was originally planned to be released as "Beta 1.9", but was later labeled "1.0.0", signifying the full release of the game. The update added a new Mushroom biome, villager NPCs that spawn in villages and Nether fortresses. Tools, weapons and armour could now be enchanted, providing stat increases and special effects. The update also added a brand new dimension titled The End, inspired by a cancelled sky dimension, and a final boss called the Ender Dragon that spawns in The End and opens a portal upon defeat which initiates the End Poem and a credits sequence. The 1.1 update released on 12 January 2012. It added spawn eggs that allow the player to spawn any mob, with the item being available only in creative mode. A new world type was added called "superflat", which generates an endless flat plain, allowing for easier building. The update also adds new enchantments for bows, improved world generation and language localizations. The 1.2 update released on 1 March 2012. It added a new jungle biome that house ocelots, which could be tamed with fish, becoming a cat. Iron golems were introduced, walking around villages and protecting them from monsters. The world's height was doubled from 128 to 256, though no terrain generates above 128 blocks. The 1.3 update was released on 1 August 2012. New dungeons were added, the desert pyramid and the jungle temple. Villager trading was introduced, along with emeralds that are used as a currency. Other new features include redstone-emitting tripwires, books that hold text written by the player, ender chests that are linked together, cocoa beans and single-player cheats. Additionally, the single-player and multiplayer codebases have been merged, raising the system requirements as "the game needs to be able to both simulate and emulate the world". On 25 October 2012, the Pretty Scary Update released. The update added new mobs such as the Wither boss and Witches, in theme for Halloween of that year. Anvils were added, used for repairing, renaming and applying enchantments to tools, weapons and armour. Other blocks were added that include item frames (picture frames that allow the display of items), flower pots and beacons, which gives the player special effects in a big radius when placed atop of a pyramid of gold, emerald, iron or diamond blocks. On 13 March 2013, the Redstone Update released. Bergensten stated that "[the update] marks the start of a series of new, more focused updates from the developer that focus on a feature or a theme." The main changes in the update are different ways that the player can make use of redstone, including a block named the "daylight detector" that can trigger circuits depending on the time of day. Released on 1 July 2013, The Horse Update added a new form of transportation with horses, donkeys and mules along with horse armour. The update also introduced leads, carpets, terracotta, hay bales, name tags and coal blocks. The Update that Changed the World was released on 25 October 2013. The update overhauled the world generation, adding 11 new biomes such as savannas, mesas, extreme hills and various forests, along with terrain features such as packed ice, podzol and red sand. The "amplified" world type was introduced, featuring extreme terrain. Additionally, new types of fish and item frames were added. The Bountiful update released on 2 September 2014. It added the Ocean Monument alongside a new boss called the Elder Guardian, as well as rabbits, bouncy slime blocks, customizable banners and a new female default character skin, Alex. A new world type was added that allowed full customization of terrain features and structure generation. The update also updated item enchanting and repairing. Following Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang AB and Persson's subsequent departure from the company, no new major updates were released until February 2016. Teased in the 2015 April Fools' Day update and released on 29 February 2016, the Combat Update aimed to improve Minecraft's combat mechanics as well as expand the End dimension. Swords and axes were assigned a cooldown, making players unable to attack rapidly. Dual wielding was introduced, allowing the players to equip any item in their "off-hand" slot, including a brand new shield item that absorbs most enemy damage. The End dimension was expanded, with the player being able to visit more end islands after defeating the Ender Dragon on the main island. End cities can be found on these islands, which contain powerful loot, including an equippable set of elytra that allows the player to glide in the air. The reception to the combat changes was controversial, with certain users and community-run servers opting not to update to 1.9. Bergensten stated that "the combat system wasn’t very interesting and we simply wanted to give it a little bit more variation", noting that the changes were "almost universally hated by the PVP community". The Frostburn Update, released on 8 June 2016, adds additional biome-dependent variants for zombies and skeletons, polar bears, Nether magma blocks, fossils, as well as improvements for world generation and mob spawning. The Exploration Update was released on 14 November 2016. A new structure was added, the woodland mansion that houses illagers, a hostile version of villagers that attack villagers and the player. Dropped from the magic-powered evoker illagers, Totems of Undying can prevent an otherwise fatal event when held by the player. A new villager type called the cartographer was added who sells maps that lead to various structures. Other additions include llamas, a portable chest item called the Shulker Box and cursed enchantments. The World of Color was released on 7 June 2017 and added new concrete and terracotta blocks, as well as tameable parrots. It also improved various colored blocks, making them more vibrant. The achievement system originally added in Beta was replaced with advancements, which give the player experience points for completing them. On 20 September 2017, the Better Together update was released for Windows 10, console and mobile ports of Minecraft, unifying them under the name Minecraft: Bedrock Edition. Following the update, the original PC version was renamed to Minecraft: Java Edition. Update Aquatic, an ocean overhaul, was released on 18 July 2018. The update made oceans more varied and added various biomes and structures, such as seagrass, coral reefs, icebergs, buried treasures and shipwrecks that contain loot. Fish, which were previously only available as items, were introduced as a mob that could be captured in a bucket. A new underwater zombie was added, the Drowned, that has a rare chance to spawn with a throwable trident weapon that can be looted and used by the player. Sea turtles were introduced, producing scutes that are used to craft a helmet that extends the amount of time the player can survive underwater without oxygen. Other additions include dolphins, blue ice and improved swimming mechanics. Released on 23 April 2019, the Village & Pillage update focused on improving the villages and villager NPCs as well as adding a new raid event. Villagers were reworked to behave more realistically and have their trades be dependent on their "job block", instead of their profession being selected randomly on spawn. A raid event was added, with villages now being vulnerable to attack from illagers. The update also introduced biome-dependent villages and villager clothes, as well as pandas, foxes, crossbows, campfires, cherries and bamboo. The Buzzy Bees update was released on 10 December 2019. The update added bees that can be found in forests and are neutral to the player, becoming aggressive when provoked and dying shortly after a sting. They can pollinate flowers and bring honey to their nest or a player crafted beehive. Honey collected in bottles can be used to craft honey blocks, which are used in conjunction with pistons to push adjacent blocks similarly to slime blocks, though slime and honey blocks do not stick. In addition, honey blocks suppress fall damage and make the player slide down the sides of the block; these mechanics were used by the players to make parkour maps. Various mods have been released that change the appearance of bees. The Nether Update was released on 23 June 2020. The update centered around updating the Nether dimension, making it more varied and useful. New Nether biomes were added, such as soul sand valleys, basalt deltas and crimson and warped forests. Zombie pigmen had their appearance changed slightly and were renamed to zombified piglins. Regular piglins were added, hostile to the player unless one wears gold armour. They can be bartered with by giving them gold in exchange for various items. The update also introduced striders, a passive mob that can be ridden to safely traverse lava. Bastion remnants were added to the Nether, housing hostile piglin brutes and chests with valuable loot, including a brand new music disc "Pigstep". The music disc, along with new ambient music tracks that play in the Nether, were composed by Lena Raine and appear in the soundtrack album Minecraft: Nether Update (Original Game Soundtrack). Netherite, a brand new Nether-exclusive material, is used to upgrade diamond armour and tools, making them more durable and fireproof. Additionally, the update added respawn anchors that make the player respawn in the Nether after death (regular beds blow up in the Nether), target blocks that emit redstone signal, lodestone blocks and the originally-scrapped crying obsidian blocks. Announced during Minecraft Live 2020, the Caves & Cliffs update was originally supposed to release in full in Summer 2021, but was split into two smaller updates due to the team not wanting to rush what they described as the "most ambitious [update]" yet, the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the workflow, as well as technical challenges due to the maximum world height being increased. Caves & Cliffs: Part I released on 8 June 2021. The update added axolotls, who were added following Mojang Studios' trend of adding endangered species to the game to raise awareness and quickly became a fan favourite feature of the update. Other new mobs include mountain goats and aquifer-inhabiting glow squids, the latter of which controversially won the previous year's mob vote that was allegedly rigged by the Minecraft YouTuber Dream. Copper was added, collected from underground ores and used to craft decorative copper blocks, lightning rods and spyglasses. Copper blocks placed in the world oxidize over time, with the color gradually turning from orange to teal; the process can be stopped at any stage of oxidization by waxing the block using honeycomb. New cave flora was also added, including moss, glow lichens, spore blossoms, glow berries, dripleafs and azalea. Amethyst could be found underground in geodes consisting of smooth basalt and calcite. Additionally, the update adds dripstone stalactites and stalagmites, tuff, candles and powder snow. Caves & Cliffs: Part II released on 30 November 2021. The update reworked the world generation to be more expansive, with higher mountains and deeper caves, along with new biomes for both. To achieve such change, the world height was increased from 256 to 384, 64 blocks up and down. Mountains were changed to have a gradual biome shift, along with making them higher and featuring more defined peaks. Caves were expanded, featuring more varied generation, larger aquifers and new biomes, such as lush caves and dripstone caves. A mysterious and dangerous Deep Dark cave biome, archaeology features, and bundles were also set to appear, but were later postponed to The Wild Update, Trails & Tales and Bundles of Bravery updates respectively. New music by Lena Raine and Samuel Åberg was composed for the update and later released as Minecraft: The Wild Update (Original Game Soundtrack). The Wild Update was released on 7 June 2022. It added two new biomes, mangrove swamp and Deep Dark, the latter of which was originally planned for release in the Caves & Cliffs update. It also added a new type of wood, mud blocks, boats with chests, frogs and tadpoles. The update was originally going to add fireflies that could be eaten by frogs, but the feature was scrapped due to fireflies being poisonous to frogs in real life, with game director Agnes Larsson stating that "if we release a feature like fireflies that are poisonous to frogs and we have frogs eating them, that actually might lead to people killing their real life frogs". A concept art of a reworked birch forest biome was also showed during the update's reveal, but the biome was not touched in the update. These actions led to criticism, with various users nicknaming the update "The Mild Update" due to the amount of content added deemed insufficient. Fireflies would be eventually added in the "Spring to Life" game drop released in 2025. Released on 28 June 2022, update 1.19.1 added a feature that allows players to report chat messages by other players for inappropriate or dangerous behavior. The reports are manually reviewed by Mojang Studios employees and can lead to the reported player getting banned from playing all multiplayer servers if he is found to be in violation of Xbox Community Standards. The feature was widely criticized by the players; some pointed out that it is possible to be reported on one's own server, others opined that chat monitoring may lead to further censorship and dubbed the update "1.19.84", referencing the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Community manager MojangMeesh responded to criticism on Reddit, stating that the system is not going to be changed or reverted despite the feedback and asking people not to harass other employees; his comment received almost 2,000 downvotes. Various mods have been created to circumvent chat reporting. The Trails & Tales update was announced during Minecraft Live 2022 as an unnamed upcoming update and was released on 7 June 2023. The update added cherry blossoms, along with bamboo planks. Originally planned for 1.17, archaeology was introduced, with the player being able to excavate items from suspicious sand and gravel near certain structures using a brush. The buried items include pottery sherds used to craft ceramic pots with art, and sniffer eggs, which slowly hatch into a sniffer, a new fictional mob able to dig out items from soil otherwise unavailable to the player. Additionally, camels, decorative armour trims, hanging signs and chiseled bookshelves were added. In September 2023, Mojang Studios announced its switch from major annual updates to "game drops" that release more frequently, stating that "alongside these regular content drops, our developers will be focusing on long-term initiatives to ensure we can continue to evolve Minecraft long into the future". The first ever seasonal game drop was released on 5 December 2023, named "Bats and Pots". The drop added more functionality to pots added in the previous update, making them able to store items and break when hit with a projectile. Bats were also redesigned. Released on 23 April 2024, the Armored Paws game drop added armadillos, the previous year's mob vote winner, as well as new wolf variants. Armadillos are scared of players and roll up into a ball when approached or hurt. Armadillo scutes can be brushed off the animal using a brush. The scutes are used to craft wolf armour. The Tricky Trials update was released on 13 June 2024. New underground dungeons were added called the trial chambers, containing mob spawners and valuable loot. Going into the dungeon with a bad omen status effect increases the difficulty of the encounters, giving enemies better armour and weapons, while also increasing the quality of loot. Maces were introduced, crafted using heavy cores obtained from trial chambers. The damage inflicted by the weapon is proportional to the amount of distance fallen, with a successful hit negating fall damage. Breezes could be found in trial chambers, dealing little damage but high knockback, with their projectiles being able to activate redstone traps. The mob drops wind charges, which can be used by the player to knock mobs back or propel oneself into the air, akin to rocket jumping. New copper blocks were added, with most being used in the trial chambers. The update also added a redstone-powered automated crafting table, new music discs, armour trims and additional paintings, most of which were done by Zetterstrand, who created the original set of Minecraft's paintings. The Bundles of Bravery game drop was released on 22 October 2024. It added bundles that are able to hold up to 64 different items in a single inventory slot. The bundles can also be dyed. Announced alongside Bundles of Bravery, The Garden Awakens game drop was released on 3 December 2024. It added a rare forest biome named the pale garden. The biome has a grey, desaturated look and no ambient music plays inside the biome. A new hostile mob called the Creaking was introduced. Creakings spawn in the pale garden during night and attack players who are not looking at it, otherwise standing completely still. The mob cannot be damaged directly; killing the mob requires destroying the creaking heart found inside trees. The Creaking drops resin upon death, which can be crafted into resin bricks. Various sources noted the horror theme of the update. The Spring to Life game drop was released on 25 March 2025. It added new environment blocks, including bushes, dry grass, cactus flowers and leaf litter, as well as new ambient sounds for various biomes. Fireflies were added, an ambient feature originally slated for release for The Wild Update in 2022. Additionally, new biome-specific variants for chickens, cows and pigs and were added. Announced during Minecraft Live 2025, the Chase the Skies game drop was released on 17 June 2025. The drop added a new mob called the happy ghast, a non-hostile variant of ghasts that can be tamed and ridden with a harness. They are obtained by rescuing dried ghasts from the Nether, and put into water in the Overworld. The update also introduced the player locator bar, overhauled lead mechanics and added two music discs, one of which being a chiptune remix by Hyper Potions of "Steve's Lava Chicken" from A Minecraft Movie obtained by killing a chicken jockey. The Copper Age game drop was released on 30 September 2025. It added the copper golem, a player-made mob capable of moving items between chests and sorting them. Additional copper blocks such as chests, chains, lanterns and torches were also added. The shelf block were also introduced, as well as copper armour and tools. The Mounts of Mayhem game drop was released on 9 December 2025. A new tiered spear weapon was introduced, dealing damage based on player speed. Giant rideable nautiluses were added, used for underwater traversal due to their fast speed and the ability to extend the player's breath. The update also added additional variants to mobs, such as a zombified camel variant called Camel Husk and a desert skeleton variant called the Parched, who fires arrows of weakness at the player, while also introducing zombie horses, a previously unused mob. On 2 December 2025, Mojang Studios announced a change in Minecraft's version numbering, switching from semantic to calendar versioning starting in 2026, with the next unannounced update being labeled as 26.1 (the first update of 2026). Upcoming content From 2019 to 2020, a new branch of snapshots was developed, named the Combat Tests. The snapshots experimented with changing various combat mechanics, with the goal of making a combat system for both Java and Bedrock editions of Minecraft, fixing the disparity between the versions. References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Lands_or_Bust] \| [TOKENS: 1162]
Contents Far Lands or Bust Far Lands or Bust (abbreviated FLoB) is an online video series created by Kurt J. Mac in which he plays the video game Minecraft. The series depicts his journey to the "Far Lands", a distant area of Minecraft worlds where, in certain old versions of the game, the terrain generation does not function correctly due to an integer overflow, creating a warped landscape. Kurt began traveling in March 2011, and completed his journey to the Far Lands on October 4, 2025. From season 13 onwards, the series has been renamed to Far Lands and Beyond (abbreviated FLaB), reflecting the changed nature of the series as the initial destination has now been reached. Episodes of Far Lands or Bust typically act as a sort of podcast, with the game providing a backing track while Kurt discusses recent events in his life, news and science. The show also encourages viewers to donate to charity to reach fundraising goals. This charity of choice was originally Child's Play, for which the show raised over $400,000. From 2018 to 2019 and 2023 to 2024, the charity was Direct Relief. In 2020, the charity was the Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) in Washington, from which Kurt adopted his own dog, Juno, in 2017. On August 30 of the same year, Kurt announced he would no longer be using PAWS as his charity, mostly due to complications with their donation system, instead switching to supporting the Equal Justice Initiative. Since then, the series has supported the CDC Foundation, Rise Above The Disorder, Equality Texas, and UNRWA. The show holds the Guinness World Record for the longest journey in Minecraft. Format Minecraft is a sandbox video game which places players in a 3D, procedurally generated world. As a player walks in any direction, the game generates terrain ahead of them, creating (in theory) a virtually infinite world for the player to explore. However, due to computational limits in earlier versions of the game, at a distance of roughly 12,550,821 blocks from the center of the world the terrain generation algorithm behaves unexpectedly, creating a sudden warped landscape. Markus Persson, popularly known as Notch, the original developer of Minecraft, commented that "Walking that far will take a very long time. Besides, the bugs add mystery and charisma to the Far Lands." The name "Far Lands" was adopted by the community to refer to this area. Persson also said it would be "impossible to reach the Far Lands" and Kurt took that as a challenge. Note that the Far Lands are however not the ultimate edge of the game world, which instead occurs at 2,147,483,647 blocks from the origin (the maximum value of a signed 32-bit integer) and crashes the game if one attempts to venture past it. Due to changes to the game's code, recent versions of the game do not contain the same error, and terrain continues to generate normally at distances up to 30,000 kilometres (19,000 mi) from the center of the world. Kurt has continued to record his series in version Beta 1.7.3, the latest version of the game in which the Far Lands are still present. Persson estimated in 2014 that walking to the Far Lands would take approximately 800 hours. Even further out (32 million blocks), the player falls into the void. This is, to an extent, intended by the developers. Over 30 legitimate journeys to the Far Lands have been verified as of October 2023. About 1/3 have been completed (some using a 1/8th shortcut through the Nether dimension), 1/3 are in progress, and 1/3 have become inactive (including one death, TinfoilChef). For example, in June 2020, this goal was first reached by KilloCrazyMan and, in August 2022, it was reached by MysticalMidget, after 2,500 hours and 32 million blocks of walking. In the game, a debug screen can be opened by pressing the F3 key, which displays the player's current coordinates in the world. In Kurt's journey to the Far Lands, F3 is only pressed once each season's charity donations goal has been met, as a way to conclude the season. Additionally, he builds a monument to commemorate each occasion. An exception to this was when he crossed a point where the floating-point error grew from two texture pixels to four. On August 8, 2020, Kurt witnessed an increase in the floating-point error jitter during a live stream (listed as episode 793.5). Kurt pressed F3 in the next episode, 794, to confirm he had hit the milestone of 4,194,304 blocks. He built a monument to mark the point. The next time this occurred was April 16, 2024, during that year's FLoB-a-thon, when he noticed the jitter increase again after 8,388,608 blocks of total progress. In September 2025, AntVenom, a Minecraft YouTuber, predicted that Kurt was within 200,000 blocks of the Far Lands. On October 4, 2025, Kurt reached the Far Lands during a specially planned Twitch stream. In a post on his YouTube channel, Kurt stated he intends to continue the series after reaching the Far Lands. On December 31, 2025, the first post-Far Lands episode of the series kicked off season 13, along with a renaming of the series to Far Lands and Beyond going forward. References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft_Multiplayer_Fun] \| [TOKENS: 690]
Contents Minecraft Multiplayer Fun "Minecraft Multiplayer Fun" is a 2010 YouTube video, noted for being the oldest video available for viewing on the PewDiePie channel. The video was uploaded by Felix Kjellberg, the owner of the channel, on 2 October 2010. Also featuring Xebaz, a friend of Kjellberg's, the video shows the two playing Minecraft, a sandbox video game. "Minecraft Multiplayer Fun" has been viewed more than 22 million times as of March 2024.[update] Background and release Kjellberg registered his "PewDiePie" YouTube account on 29 April 2010, after forgetting the password to his old account.[a] His first YouTube upload was a different Minecraft video, which he deleted and no longer has access to. Nonetheless, "Minecraft Multiplayer Fun" has been cited as Kjellberg's first video by various outlets. Kjellberg described his commentary at the time as 'shy', and stated "it was so weird to me, sitting alone in a room talking into a microphone. That was unheard of back at the time. No one really did it." Released on 2 October 2010, the video is Kjellberg's oldest available for public viewing. The video was released while Minecraft was still in its alpha stage of development. The video's description reads: "My friend was going to show me something inside the building, somehow a zombie had spawn waiting for us in his minecart." Indeed, the video featured "what sounded like a young man laughing heartily at an unlucky zombie that had gotten stuck in a tree." The video features mainly Swedish off-screen commentary from Kjellberg and Xebaz, although there is occasional swearing in English. This is in contrast to the English he has primarily employed in his later videos. Reception and legacy "Minecraft Multiplayer Fun" has been viewed over 22 million times as of May 2024. The video itself has been cited as one that turned Kjellberg "into [a] huge YouTube star" by Business Insider, as well as one of the "10 most important videos in YouTube history" by Observer. Despite Minecraft being particularly notable within the Let's Play community, which Kjellberg helped to popularize, he did not upload playthroughs of the game during early periods of the game's popularity. He stated in a video that "it felt like people were playing it just because it was popular, and not because they were actually [having fun] doing it." However, in 2019, Kjellberg began to regularly upload Minecraft gameplays on his channel; Polygon wrote that he began to play the game, in part because, "he feels that he is flexible enough to not have the game define his channel." The Verge cited one content strategist stating that Kjellberg was the top creator for the Minecraft keyword. In a pinned comment made in response to people asking about Xebaz, Kjellberg said that "Sad reality is sometimes friendships don't last forever – doesn't mean it's anyone's fault or that something happened. Xebaz was such a great friend to have during this time, he was one of the few people who understood and shared my dreams with YouTube and supported it 1000%." See also Notes References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club] \| [TOKENS: 1358]
Contents 27 Club The 27 Club is an informal list consisting mostly of popular musicians who died at age 27. Although the claim of a "statistical spike" for the death of musicians at that age has been refuted by scientific research, it remains a common cultural conception that the phenomenon exists, with many celebrities who die at 27 noted for their high-risk lifestyles. The original basis for the notion was a cluster of prominent musicians' deaths at the age of 27 between 1969 and 1971, most notably Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison; but only after the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994 was the notion of a "club" established, and the death of Amy Winehouse in 2011 enhanced its prominence. Different write-ups include a number of other musicians and sometimes other celebrities. Cultural perception Beginning with the deaths of several 27-year-old popular musicians between 1969 and 1971 (namely Jones, Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison), dying at the age of 27 came to be, and remains, a perennial subject of popular culture, celebrity journalism, and entertainment industry lore. This perceived phenomenon, which came to be known as the "27 Club", attributes special significance to popular musicians, artists, actors, and other celebrities who died at age 27, often as a result of drug and alcohol abuse or violent means such as homicide, suicide, or transportation-related accidents. The cultural interpretation of events gave rise to an urban myth that celebrity deaths are more common at 27, a claim that has been refuted by statistical research as discussed in the scientific studies section below. However, a subsequent statistical analysis demonstrated that the myth itself has shaped cultural memory by boosting the visibility and cultural prominence of those who die at 27. History Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison all died at the age of 27 between 1969 and 1971. At the time, the coincidence gave rise to some comment, but, according to Charles R. Cross, a biographer of Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, "it wasn't until Kurt Cobain took his own life in 1994 that the idea of the 27 Club arrived in the popular zeitgeist." Cross claims that the "launch of the Club concept" can be traced to the growing influence of the Internet and sensational celebrity journalism on popular culture in the years following Cobain's death, as well as media interpretations of a statement by Cobain's mother, Wendy Fradenburg Cobain O'Connor, quoted in the local Aberdeen, Washington, newspaper The Daily World, and subsequently carried worldwide by the Associated Press: "Now he's gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club." Many contemporary journalists interpreted her words as referring to the infamous untimely deaths of fellow rock musicians like Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison, a view shared by Cross and R. Gary Patterson, chronicler of rock music urban myth. That's really selfish to live to 90 years old unless you have something to offer like maybe William Burroughs. I definitely don't want to be that old. I feel more bonded with the Jim Morrison type of living on the edge, rock & roll poet, in a conservative way. –Kurt Cobain The intended meaning of "that stupid club" referred to by Cobain's mother is disputed. In his analysis of how her quote helped popularize the 27 Club, Eric Segalstad, author of The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll, asserted that she was actually referring to the "tragic family matter" of Cobain's two uncles and his great-uncle, all of whom had committed suicide. Other contemporary journalists linked her quote to the then-recent heroin-related deaths of fellow young Seattle rock musicians Stefanie Sargent of 7 Year Bitch and Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone, both aged 24. Cross, himself, dismissed "the absurd notion that Kurt Cobain intentionally timed his death so he could join the 27 Club", noting that Cobain "had nearly died from drug overdoses on at least two dozen occasions in the year before his death... [and] made several previous suicide attempts at various ages." In 2011, Amy Winehouse died at the age of 27, prompting a renewed swell of media attention devoted to the 27 Club. Three years earlier, Winehouse's personal assistant, Alex Haines, told the British press that Winehouse, then 25, feared she would join Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, and Kurt Cobain in dying at 27: "She reckoned she would join the 27 Club of rock stars who died at that age. She told me, 'I have a feeling I'm gonna die young.'" A derivative urban legend emerged in the popular culture of smoking and cannabis as the so-called white lighter myth or white lighter curse. It purports that Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Cobain, and others linked to the 27 Club died while in possession of a white disposable cigarette lighter, leading such items to become associated with bad fortune. Snopes discredited the theory in 2017, noting that Bic did not begin producing disposable lighters until 1973 — several years after the deaths of Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison — and disposable lighters from other companies were not widely available before then. Scientific studies Despite the cultural significance given to musician and celebrity deaths at age 27, the common claim that they are statistically more common at this age is an urban myth, refuted by scientific research. A study by university academics published in the British Medical Journal in December 2011 concluded that there was no increase in the risk of death for musicians at the age of 27, stating that there were equally small increases at ages 25 and 32. The study noted that young adult musicians have a higher death rate than the general young adult population, surmising that the conclusion that could be drawn is as such: "fame may increase the risk of death among musicians, but this risk is not limited to age 27". A 2014 article at The Conversation suggested that statistical evidence shows popular musicians are most likely to die at the age of 56 (2.2% compared to 1.3% at 27). In popular culture The 27 Club frequently appears by name and reference in popular culture and mass media. Several exhibitions have been devoted to the idea, as well as novels, films, stage plays, songs, video games, and comics. See also References Bibliography
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Urban_legends] \| [TOKENS: 274]
Contents Template:Urban legends This is a navigational template created using {{navbox}}. It can be transcluded on pages by placing {{Urban legends}} below the standard article appendices and above categories. Initial visibility This template's initial visibility currently defaults to autocollapse, meaning that if there is another collapsible item on the page (a navbox, sidebar, or table with the collapsible attribute), it is hidden apart from its title bar; if not, it is fully visible. To change this template's initial visibility, the \|state= parameter may be used: Templates using the classes class=navbox ({{navbox}}) or class=nomobile ({{sidebar}}) are not displayed in article space on the mobile web site of English Wikipedia. Mobile page views accounted for 60% to 70% of all page views from 2020 through 2025. Briefly, these templates are not included in articles because 1) they are not well designed for mobile, and 2) they significantly increase page sizes—bad for mobile downloads—in a way that is not useful for the mobile use case. You can review/watch phab:T124168 for further discussion. TemplateData A navigational box that can be placed at the bottom of articles. Template parameters[Edit template data] The initial visibility of the navbox Template transclusions
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Mary_(folklore)] \| [TOKENS: 532]
Contents Bloody Mary (folklore) Bloody Mary is a legend of a ghost, phantom, witch, or spirit conjured to reveal the future. She is said to appear in a mirror when her name is chanted repeatedly. The Bloody Mary apparition may be benevolent or malevolent, depending on historical variations of the legend. Bloody Mary appearances are mostly witnessed in group participation play. Ritual Historically, the divination ritual encouraged young women to walk up a flight of stairs backward holding a candle and a hand mirror, in a darkened house. As they gazed into the mirror, they were supposed to glimpse a view of their future husband's face. There was, however, a chance that they would see a skull (or the face of the Grim Reaper) instead, indicating that they were going to die before they would have the chance to marry. In the modern ritual that began to coalesce in the late 1960s, Bloody Mary allegedly appears to individuals or groups who ritualistically invoke her name in an act of catoptromancy. This is done by repeatedly chanting her name into a mirror placed in a dim or candle-lit room. More modern versions of the ritual are played in a restroom. The name must be uttered 3 times (or some other specified number of times). Some stories suggest you must chant her name into the bathroom mirror 47 times before she will come out. The Bloody Mary apparition allegedly appears as a corpse, witch, and ghost that can either be friendly, evil, or a demonic spirit, and is sometimes seen covered in blood (hence the name). The lore surrounding the ritual states that participants may endure the apparition screaming at them, cursing them, strangling them, stealing their soul, drinking their blood,[citation needed] or scratching their eyes out. Some variations of the ritual call Bloody Mary by a different name—"Hell Mary" and "Mary Worth" are popular examples. The modern legend of Hanako-san in Japan strongly parallels the Bloody Mary mythology. Identification There is some debate on the identification of Bloody Mary and if she is based on a real woman. A number of historical figures have been put forward as candidates for "Mary" including Mary I of England (daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon), who had around 300 religious Protestant dissenters burned at the stake during her reign, earning her the nickname "Bloody Mary"; and Mary Worth, who has been identified as either a woman who killed slaves escaping the American South via the Underground Railroad or a woman who was burned at the stake during the Witch trials in the early modern period. See also References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_in_Minecraft] \| [TOKENS: 529]
Contents The Three-Body Problem in Minecraft The Three-Body Problem in Minecraft (Chinese: 我的三体; pinyin: Wǒdè Sāntǐ; lit. 'My Three-Body') is a Chinese network animated series based on the science fiction novels The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin. Initially, the animation was an unofficial machinima doujin work, but from the second season onward, it became an official adaptation. Production The animation's director, Li Zhenyi (李圳宜), is a student studying at the University of Pau and the Adour Region and a fan of the Three-Body Problem. As he was often asked about the novel, he decided to use Minecraft to make an animated adaption of the work. When he made the first episode, he was the only person involved aside from the voice actors, so he needed to adapt the screenplay, perform auditions, and design the levels. Due to technical, experience and financial constraints, the first season was relatively unprofessional, but nevertheless managed to attract others to help work on the production. After the fourth episode, the creators set up a production team, and after the ninth, they all converted to animation production. With the debut of the second season, quality was further increased, with the addition of lighting and character expressions. It also became an official adaptation, allowing the team to receive financial support and official licensing from the publishers of the original novel. Seasons The average episode lasts about 20 minutes. During the first season, there was a six-month gap between episodes 10 and 11. After the second episode of season two, updates were discontinued for a long time, before broadcasting began again in January 2018. Reception Critical reception was largely positive. On the Chinese social website Douban and video website Bilibili, the animation received an overall rating of 9.7/10. According to the People's Daily, the creators' animation, voice-over work, scene design, and editing manages use the video-game-style pixel art into a production with a quality similar to sci-fi movies. They also commended the quality of the animation, especially in the third season. The Paper also praised it, stating that since the production team were fans of the original novel, they could preserve the details that made it appealing, and make the adapted plot compelling and rich. In 2015, the production team was awarded the Silver Prize of the Xingyun Awards. Outside of China, users have uploaded the series onto YouTube, putting each season onto a playlist. References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_the_Earth] \| [TOKENS: 630]
Contents Build the Earth BuildTheEarth (BTE) is a project dedicated to creating a 1:1 scale model of Earth within the sandbox video game Minecraft. History BuildTheEarth was created by YouTuber PippenFTS in March 2020 as a collaborative effort to recreate Earth in the video game Minecraft. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the server aimed to provide players with the opportunity to virtually experience and construct the world. In a YouTube video, PippenFTS called for prospective participants to recreate man-made structures over a rudimentary model of Earth's terrain. A Discord server created to help coordinate the project attracted over a hundred thousand users by April 2020. PippenFTS left the project entirely in 2024, but the project is still actively maintained by the community. Following unsuccessful attempts to generate terrain using a Mercator projection, organizers opted for a modified version of the Dymaxion map projection. The alternative approach prioritized minimizing distortions in land masses, at the cost of highly distorted oceans. Minecraft developer Mojang Studios featured the project on their website on Earth Day (April 22), 2020. In July 2020, YouTuber MrBeast released a video where he and 50 other people built his hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina within the project. In 2020, a full sized recreation of the Taj Mahal was completed on the server by Daniel Tan. In 2022, a team of over 2,000 players constructed a recreation of many places in New York City on a 1:1 scale, including many famous sites such as the 9/11 memorial, New York County Supreme Court, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and Soho. A team of over 400 players has completed construction on multiple buildings from Portugal, including the Algarve International Circuit. Software Originally, the project primarily depends on two Minecraft modifications to function: Cubic Chunks and Terra++. Cubic Chunks removes Minecraft's limitation on building structures beyond a certain height. Terra++ uses information from geographic data services, such as OpenStreetMap, to automatically generate terrain to ease the building process. However, with the introduction of new world height limits in Minecraft version 1.18, more regions around the world can fit into the vanilla range. As of 2025[update], the majority of the project has shifted to Minecraft 1.20+, with no modifications except for parts of the US and South America.[citation needed] The new system for building the Earth is using a command called "/tpll <coordinates> <coordinates>". To use this command, players take advantage of Google maps and the ability to copy exact coordinates from real life with the click of a button. These builds are very accurate because of this system. Limitations In Minecraft, the world is divided into 1x1x1 meter cubes, so builds can only be accurate to the nearest meter. Builders use the software Google Earth Pro to take exact measurements of building to port them in game, but that still doesn't completely negate having to round to the nearest meter. References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gameknight999] \| [TOKENS: 548]
Contents Gameknight999 Gameknight999 is a series of children's novels written by Mark Cheverton and published from 2013 to 2017. The series is unofficially based on Minecraft and set within its world. The second novel of the series was listed in the Publishers Weekly bestseller list in November 2014 and the New York Times children's series bestseller list in February 2015. Plot The series describes adventures of the protagonist with the user name "Gameknight999", who is initially a griefer and finds himself teleported by one of his father's inventions (digitizer) into the world of the Minecraft video game. Gameknight discovers that the creatures in the game are alive and it isn't a game to them. Gameknight experiences real-life adventures and actual danger with life-or-death consequences while stuck in the Minecraft digital universe. Most of the novels feature Herobrine as the main antagonist, who is an urban legend and creepypasta that originated as a hoax propagated by an anonymous post on the English-language imageboard website 4chan. Within the series, he is presented as a sentient computer virus intending on escaping the confines of Minecraft alongside an army of monsters from the game, with the intent to wipe out humanity. Background Mark Cheverton is an author and engineer based in upstate New York. Cheverton says he originally wrote the first book of the Gameknight999 series, Invasion of the Overworld, to teach his son about cyberbullying. Publication history Along with Cheverton's other books, the GameKnight999 series is published by Skyhorse Publishing under the Sky Pony Press imprint, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. The publisher distributes all of Cheverton's novels as well as four box sets. From 2014 to 2017, a total of six trilogies featuring Gameknight999 were published. Reception This Gameknight999 series (in particular the second novel Battle for the Nether) was listed in the Publishers Weekly bestseller list in November 2014. Battle for the Nether was listed for one week in the New York Times children's series bestseller list in February 2015. According to Cheverton's website, the series has been published in 32 countries and translated into 22 languages. In reviewing the first novel, online magazine Brutal Gamer wrote that "the story stays pretty true to the Minecraft experience. ... Whether you're trying to pry your Minecraft addict away from the screen for a little while, or just looking for an interesting new choice for summer reading time, Invasion of the Overworld is sure to be a hit with the 8–11-year-old set." References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Urban_legends] \| [TOKENS: 156]
Contents Template talk:Urban legends Bullshit I think, that Penn & Teller should be included in this template. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Multimotyl (talk • contribs) 18:40, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply] Black Dogs Should Black Dogs really be included on this template? Their page says they're folklore, not urban legends, with examples in England dating back to at least the 1500s, and and example in France dating back to before 1000 AD. As well, their page isn't in any urban legend category, nor is the Black Dog category part of an urban legend category SteelTitan121 (talk) 12:55, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EditPage/Template:Urban_legends] \| [TOKENS: 1446]
Editing Template:Urban legends Copy and paste: – — ° ′ ″ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · § Sign your posts on talk pages: ~~~~ Cite your sources: <ref></ref> {{}} {{{}}} \| [] [[]] [[Category:]] #REDIRECT [[]]   <s></s> <sup></sup> <sub></sub> <code></code> <pre></pre> <blockquote></blockquote> <ref></ref> <ref name="" /> {{Reflist}} <references /> <includeonly></includeonly> <noinclude></noinclude> {{DEFAULTSORT:}} <nowiki></nowiki> <!-- --> <span class="plainlinks"></span> Symbols: ~ \| ¡ ¿ † ‡ ↔ ↑ ↓ • ¶ # ∞ ‹› «» ¤ ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ $ ₫ ₯ € ₠ ₣ ƒ ₴ ₭ ₤ ℳ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₰ £ ៛ ₨ ₪ ৳ ₮ ₩ ¥ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ 𝄫 ♭ ♮ ♯ 𝄪 © ¼ ½ ¾ Latin: A a Á á À à Â â Ä ä Ǎ ǎ Ă ă Ā ā Ã ã Å å Ą ą Æ æ Ǣ ǣ B b C c Ć ć Ċ ċ Ĉ ĉ Č č Ç ç D d Ď ď Đ đ Ḍ ḍ Ð ð E e É é È è Ė ė Ê ê Ë ë Ě ě Ĕ ĕ Ē ē Ẽ ẽ Ę ę Ẹ ẹ Ɛ ɛ Ǝ ǝ Ə ə F f G g Ġ ġ Ĝ ĝ Ğ ğ Ģ ģ H h Ĥ ĥ Ħ ħ Ḥ ḥ I i İ ı Í í Ì ì Î î Ï ï Ǐ ǐ Ĭ ĭ Ī ī Ĩ ĩ Į į Ị ị J j Ĵ ĵ K k Ķ ķ L l Ĺ ĺ Ŀ ŀ Ľ ľ Ļ ļ Ł ł Ḷ ḷ Ḹ ḹ M m Ṃ ṃ N n Ń ń Ň ň Ñ ñ Ņ ņ Ṇ ṇ Ŋ ŋ O o Ó ó Ò ò Ô ô Ö ö Ǒ ǒ Ŏ ŏ Ō ō Õ õ Ǫ ǫ Ọ ọ Ő ő Ø ø Œ œ Ɔ ɔ P p Q q R r Ŕ ŕ Ř ř Ŗ ŗ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ S s Ś ś Ŝ ŝ Š š Ş ş Ș ș Ṣ ṣ ß T t Ť ť Ţ ţ Ț ț Ṭ ṭ Þ þ U u Ú ú Ù ù Û û Ü ü Ǔ ǔ Ŭ ŭ Ū ū Ũ ũ Ů ů Ų ų Ụ ụ Ű ű Ǘ ǘ Ǜ ǜ Ǚ ǚ Ǖ ǖ V v W w Ŵ ŵ X x Y y Ý ý Ŷ ŷ Ÿ ÿ Ỹ ỹ Ȳ ȳ Z z Ź ź Ż ż Ž ž ß Ð ð Þ þ Ŋ ŋ Ə ə Greek: Ά ά Έ έ Ή ή Ί ί Ό ό Ύ ύ Ώ ώ Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω {{Polytonic\|}} Cyrillic: А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я ́ IPA: t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ β θ ð ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ⱱ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ʼ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ø ɘ ɵ ɤ ə ɚ ɛ œ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ æ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʱ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪ {{IPA\|}} Wikidata entities used in this page Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page (help):
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coghlan_(actor,_born_1842)#Death] \| [TOKENS: 2155]
Contents Charles Coghlan (actor, born 1842) Charles Francis Coghlan (11 June 1842 – 27 November 1899) was an Irish actor and playwright popular on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Early life Charles F. Coghlan was born on 11 June 1842, in Paris, France, to British subjects, Francis (sometimes spelled Frances) and Amie Marie (née Ruhly) Coghlan. His father, a native of Dublin, Ireland, was the founder of Coghlan's Continental Dispatch and publisher of Coghlan's Continental Guides, and counted among his friends, Charles Dickens, Charles Reade, and other literary figures of the day. Amie Coghlan was born on the English Channel Island of Jersey sometime around 1821. Charles Coghlan was later raised in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and Hull, Yorkshire and though originally groomed for a career in law he had chosen instead to be an actor whilst still in his teens. Career Charles Coghlan began his stage career in 1859 as a minor player with the Sadler's Wells Theatre's summer tour. During their engagement in Dublin, Ireland, Coghlan approached John Baldwin Buckstone, then manager of the Haymarket Theatre, with a play he had written. Buckstone passed on the play, but instead gave him the chance to play Monsieur Mafoi, a small role in The Pilgrim of Love, a play adapted by Lord Byron from Irving's Tales of the Alhambra, that opened at the Haymarket on 9 April 1860. Over the following few seasons Coghlan would play a number of supporting roles that steadily increased his stature as an actor. In 1868 he played Charles Surface in Sheridan's School for Scandal at the St James's Theatre, and later that year played Sir Oscar opposite Adelaide Neilson in Marston's Life for Life at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Coghlan would remain with Prince of Wales over the next seven or eight seasons, playing leading roles such as Geoffrey Delamayn in Collins' Man and Wife and Harry Speadbrow in Gilbert's Sweethearts. In 1876 Augustin Daly brought Coghlan to America where he would spend the greater balance of his career. He made his Broadway debut on 12 September 1876, at the Fifth Avenue Theater, as Alfred Evelyn in Lord Lytton's Money and was an instant success. Two months later, at the same venue, Coghlan played Orlando opposite Fanny Davenport's Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It. The next season Coghlan was engaged as the leading man at the Union Square Theater, where he played Jean Remind during the successful run of Augustus R. Cazauran's The Celebrated Case. He returned to London in 1881 to play Col. Woods, U.S.A. in the long-running The Colonel, produced at the Prince of Wales. On 13 December 1890 Coughlan was declared bankrupt. He had liabilities of £315. The pinnacle of Coghlan's near twenty-five-year career in America came on 2 December 1898, at the Fifth Avenue Theater in his own adaptation of the Dumas' play Kean titled The Royal Box, in which he played the part of the actor Clarence. This great success was tempered the following year by the failure of his play Citizen Pierre, in which he made his last New York performance. During his career Coghlan had played opposite his sister, Rose Coghlan, and in support of Lillie Langtry and Minnie Maddern Fiske. His last appearance on the stage was at Houston, Texas, on 28 October 1899, as Clarence in The Royal Box. Following his death, in 1901, Coghlan's sister, Rose, appeared at Denver, Colorado's, Elitch Theatre in the world premiere of Coghlan's Fortune's Bridge. Rose stated that "my particular reason for coming to Denver was to produce my brother's play – the one he finished just before his death. It's called Fortune's Bridge, but he didn't give it the name." Rose explained that the manuscript was sent to a typist and at the end her brother signed it and added his Canadian address: "Charles Coghlan, Fortune's Bridge." Apparently the typist moved it to the head of the first page and typed, "Fortune's Bridge, by Charles Coghlan." Rose stated "the name seemed to fit the play so well I allowed it to stand." Marriage Actress Louisa Elizabeth Thorn, a native of London, England, was apparently Charles Coghlan's common-law wife for twenty-five years or more and the mother of his daughter Gertrude Coghlan. When in 1893 Coghlan married nineteen-year-old Kühne Beveridge,[a] a promising sculptor and aspiring actress from a prominent Illinois family, questions arose about his former marital status. Rose Coghlan soon came to her brother's defense stating she had known for years that Louisa and Charles never legally married. Not long afterwards though, Rose decided to dissolve the business partnership she had with her brother. Upon learning of her father's marriage, an upset Gertrude Coghlan reportedly told the press, "I am Charles Coghlan's adopted daughter and not related to him in any way." Perhaps as an attempt to save his daughter the stigma of an illegitimate birth, Coghlan later supported Gertrude's claim that she was adopted, just not legally through the courts. Within a year of his marriage Coghlan would return to Louisa leaving Beveridge to seek an absolute divorce on the grounds of desertion. A few years later Gertrude joined her father's company playing Juliet in the Broadway production of the Royal Box and afterwards on the road. Gertrude Coghlan, who took to the stage at age sixteen, would go on to have a theatrical career spanning nearly forty years. The stage actor and director, Charles F. Coghlan (1896–1971), was often thought to be Coghlan's son, in fact he was his nephew, the son of the mezzo-soprano singer Elizabeth "Eily" Coghlan. She died in April 1900 at the age of thirty-six leaving Charles to be adopted by her sister, Rose Coghlan. Charles' father, according to his mother's New York Times obituary, was Sydney Battam or Bratton, a London banker. At the time of his wife's death, Battam was living in London with their twelve-year-old daughter, while four-year-old Charles was with his mother in America. At least one family researcher has made the claim that Charles F. Coghlan was the illegitimate son of Rose Coghlan and her one-time lover the future King Edward VII of England.[unreliable source?] Death Charles Francis Coghlan died in Galveston, Texas, on 27 November 1899, after a month's illness. He had originally come to the city with his company to perform The Royal Box, but his illness prevented him from ever taking the stage. His body was temporarily placed in a metal casket and stored in a vault at a local cemetery to await further family instructions. At first it was decided his remains would be interred on his farm in Fortune Bridge near the eastern tip of Prince Edward Island. Coghlan had sometime earlier purchased the property as a summer home and for his eventual retirement. Several days after his death, it was announced through the press that his remains would be returned to New York for cremation. Nearly a year later the disposition of the body had yet to be decided and, in the interim, his casket was swept away from its resting place by a storm surge generated from the deadly Galveston Hurricane of 1900. The New York Actors Club had, for several years, a standing reward for anyone who recovered Coghlan's coffin. In January 1904 a metal coffin was found in a marsh; at first it was thought to have been Coghlan's; however it proved to be the remains of a New York man. Coghlan's coffin/remains was eventually found in January 1907 by a group of hunters who discovered it partially submerged in a marsh some nine miles from Galveston along the east coast of mainland Texas. Years after his death and the recovery of his body, a story arose that Coghlan's metal casket had been recovered in 1907, not far from his Prince Edward Island proper, by a group of Canadian fishermen in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, after drifting some two thousand miles along the East Coast of North America. A skeptic referred to Coghlan's casket as the "homing coffin". The earliest published version of the story comes from Coghlan's fellow actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson's 1925 book, A Player under Three Reigns. It was repeated in a 1929 Ripley's Believe It or Not! column. The 1907 news reports of the recovery of his coffin/remains do not tell of the disposition of his remains; he was certainly not reburied on Prince Edward Island. According to his entry in Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of 1899: The words that were written in 1790 of his kinsman, the MacCoghlan, last Lord of Delvin-Ara, well describe Charles Coghlan: "He was a remarkably handsome man, gallant, eccentric, proud, satirical, hospitable in the extreme, and of expensive habits." A contemporary American critic thus summed up his excellence as an actor in 1879: "It is to the complete and perfect forgetting of self in his performance that the high esteem in which Mr. Coghlan is held by the thinking audience is due. He never descends to the cheap creating of effects; he plays his part for all it is worth; he does not play Charles Coghlan, with the kind assistance of somebody's text, for the amusement of his friends and admirers. Plays by Charles Coghlan List of plays written or adapted by Charles Francis Coghlan. In popular culture He was the namesake of a song by Dutch symphonic black/horror metal band Carach Angren, who have also a music video released to showcase his untimely demise and events thereafter. Notes References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baby-Roast] \| [TOKENS: 785]
Contents The Baby-Roast The Baby-Roast, also known as The Hippy Babysitter and The Cooked Baby, is an urban legend in which a baby is roasted alive at home by a babysitter or sibling. It is "one of the classic urban legends". There have been a few isolated cases where babies have been roasted. Legend In some versions, the baby is accidentally cooked when miscommunication occurs. For example, "put the turkey in the oven and the baby in the bed" is wrongly heard as "put the baby in the oven and the turkey in the bed". In other variants, the protagonist is intoxicated with drugs or alcohol, or insane. In the end, the roasted baby is sometimes served as food to be consumed by the parents. The person who roasts the baby is usually a babysitter or the baby's sibling. Documented occurrences There have been documented occurrences of babies being roasted. In 1999, Elizabeth Renee Otte put her baby Joseph Lewis Martinez into a microwave oven which resulted in his death. She was sentenced to 5 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. In 2002, Melissa Wright of Millbrook, Alabama, placed her 14-month-old daughter into a oven set on broil. The girl survived, but had third degree burns over 30 percent of her body and required years of surgery. Wright was imprisoned for attempted murder and was denied parole in 2016. In May 2012, a British citizen was arrested by Thai police after being found in possession of six corpses of roasted infants, some wrapped in gold leaf, reportedly in conformity with a "black magic ritual". On November 16, 2015, a one-year old baby, J'Zyra Thompson, died after her three-year-old sibling put her in the oven and cooked her alive. Their mother, Racqual Thompson, left her four children at home, which included a five-year-old and a two-year-old, when she went to pick up a pizza. When they returned home, Thompson found J'Zyra's body cooked in the oven. Thompson and her boyfriend of ten months, 21-year-old Cornell Malone, were charged with endangering a child. Both adults were then sentenced to 12 years in prison for abandoning a child under 15 years old. In March 2016, a 35-year-old mother in Texas showed up naked at her neighbor's door with her partially burned and naked 2-year-old daughter. When police arrived, she confessed that she had put the girl in the oven along with a cat she had recently shot dead, while making sexual advances toward an officer and singing praise to God. According to an affidavit from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, she seemed unconcerned with her daughter while in hospital and jail, where she was charged with injury to a child with serious bodily injury and tested positive for alcohol, marijuana and methamphetamine. The girl was put in foster care. In popular culture In the 1979 blaxploitation film Disco Godfather, a PCP addict claims to have honey-roasted her baby for her family's Easter dinner, ostensibly so the baby's crying wouldn't spoil the occasion. In August 2009, a joke advertisement showcasing a "body part roaster" "specially designed to roast infants and other human morsels" surfaced on the website of retailer Sears.com. The song 'Babysitter on Acid' by the all-female punk rock band, Lunachicks is a retelling of the urban legend. The teenage babysitter, under the influence of drugs, roasts the baby in the oven and says to the mother over the phone "Wanna know how the baby is? / Don't worry, she's almost done". The song was released on their 1990 album Babysitters On Acid. See also References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_in_the_backseat] \| [TOKENS: 457]
Contents Killer in the backseat The killer in the backseat (also known as High Beams) is an urban legend from the United States and United Kingdom. It was first noted by folklorist Carlos Drake in 1968 in texts collected by Indiana University students. Legend The legend involves a woman who is driving and being followed by a car or truck. The mysterious pursuer flashes his high beams, tailgates her, and sometimes even rams her vehicle. When she finally makes it home, she realizes that the driver was trying to warn her that there was a man (a murderer, or escaped mental patient) hiding in her back seat. Each time the man sat up to attack her, the driver behind had used his high beams to scare the killer, causing him to duck back down. In some versions, the woman stops for gas, and the attendant asks her to come inside to sort out a problem with her credit card. Inside the station, he asks if she knows there's a man in her back seat. (An example of this rendition can be seen in the 1998 episode of Millennium, "The Pest House".) In another, she sees a doll on the road in the moors, stops, and then the man gets in the back. Origin The story has been identified as circulating at least as early as the late 1960s, and may have gained more widespread recognition after appearing in a letter to advice columnist Ann Landers in 1982. It has been speculated, including by Snopes founder David Mikkelson, that the legend may have been inspired by a vaguely similar case which took place in 1964, in which an escaped murderer hid in the backseat of a car, only to end up shot by the car's owner, a police detective. Other somewhat similar, though not identical, cases have since been noted, including by folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand. Interpretations The story is often told with a moral. The attendant is often a lumberjack, a trucker, or a scary-looking man: someone the driver mistrusts without reason. She assumes it is the attendant who wants to do her harm, when in reality it is he who saves her life. In popular culture See also References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Satan] \| [TOKENS: 1249]
Contents Sad Satan Sad Satan is a horror video game released for Microsoft Windows in 2015. The game was allegedly created by a dark web user operating under the pseudonym "ZK". In the game, the player walks down dimly lit corridors in a first-person view while being periodically interrupted by flashes of full-screen images. There are no goals or win conditions. There are two prominent versions of Sad Satan; footage of the earliest version was uploaded to the YouTube channel Obscure Horror Corner on June 25, 2015. The channel's videos of the game were picked up by a number of English-language publications and later internationally. A later version of Sad Satan, informally known as the "clone" version owing to the substantial differences between it and the earlier version, gained notoriety for containing extremely graphic imagery, including photographs of mutilated corpses and an instance of child pornography. Gameplay The original game in the Obscure Horror Corner video has blurred graphics from a first-person view. The player walks down monochromatic corridors while various audio samples are played and looped over each other. Audio in the game leans heavily on recordings of interviews with various murderers, such as Charles Manson, as well as on distorted or reversed audio of such interviews or musical clips, such as the song "I Love Beijing Tiananmen", played in the beginning; reversed clips from the Swedish Rhapsody numbers station can also be heard. Adding to the game's theme of child abuse, The Doors' rendition of "Alabama Song" can also be heard, starting with the verse "Show me the way to the next little girl." While the player controls their character through the hallways, images may intermittently display, taking up the entire screen and preventing the player from progressing any further until the image automatically closes a few seconds later. Most of the images seem to reference child abuse, especially people indicted in Operation Yewtree, such as images of Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris surrounded by children. Other images revolve around crime, and include people convicted or accused of murder such as Japanese child murderer, cannibal, rapist and necrophile Tsutomu Miyazaki. Included also are photographs of Lady Justice statues, Colombian footballer and murder victim Andrés Escobar, and political figures such as former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former US President John F. Kennedy. Works of Roger Ballen and Walter Sanders were also included. The only other "characters" in the game are children who bear a resemblance to each other and simply stand in one place and do not move or interact with the player at all. In the final video posted by Obscure Horror Corner, one of these children does begin to follow the player, causing "contact damage". Since the player has no means of self-defense or any ability to heal damage, the player will inevitably die at this point in the game. The later "clone" of Sad Satan and its subsequent offshoots closely follow the gameplay template of the original, but display different, often far more graphic, sets of images. These images include photographs of mutilated corpses and, in the case of the earliest build, an image of child pornography. History On June 25, 2015, the YouTube channel Obscure Horror Corner uploaded a series of videos showcasing Sad Satan gameplay. There were five parts total uploaded over the course of a few weeks, with the fifth part being deleted 6 years later for unknown reasons. In an interview with Kotaku, the channel's owner, identified as "Jamie", claimed to have downloaded the game from a Tor hidden service after receiving a tip from an anonymous subscriber. The subscriber in turn claims to have found the link via a dark web internet forum, from a user only known as "ZK". On July 7, Kotaku's interview with Jamie was updated with a statement from him claiming that he deliberately misdirected people from downloading the game because of graphic content not present in his YouTube uploads, including pictures of graphic violence and child pornography. 18 minutes later, a supposed download link to Sad Satan was posted on 4chan's paranormal board /x/ by an anonymous user stating "what you've seen on YouTube isn't right. Don't believe that coward obscure horror corner. He did not show you what was truly in this game". Notably, the user also signed off their post with the initials "ZK", the alias of the supposed developer of the original game according to Jamie's original story, although the chances of this version having been developed by the original supposed "ZK" are unlikely.[why?] Rumours circulated that the 4chan version may have been developed by Jamie himself, although the most popular theory was that it was developed by an internet troll. Upon examining the game's file contents, users found pictures of mutilated corpses and child pornography, and those who ran the game experienced computer issues symptomatic of malware. Writing for TecMundo, contributor Nilton Kleina noted that this version of Sad Satan contained different content than the version shown on Obscure Horror Corner and characterized it as a "clone". Later that month, users of the r/sadsatan Reddit community uploaded a sanitized version of this build of the game, with all potentially illegal images and malware removed. Legacy Sad Satan was the last game covered by Obscure Horror Corner, and since then, the YouTube channel has been abandoned. There has been speculation that the game was in fact created by the owner of Obscure Horror Corner as a hoax or attempted urban legend, in an effort to increase the channel's subscription count. The game continued gaining recognition worldwide and was played by famous streamers and gaming YouTubers due to its dark nature. Various other versions of the game have circulated online on platforms like Steam, itch.io, Game Jolt, Roblox, iOS, and Google Play Games. These other versions vary wildly in gameplay and content and seem to have no connection to ZK or Obscure Horror Corner, while some are mostly remakes/ports of the existing games, though with significant visual changes (namely regarding any illegal and copyrighted material) to conform to terms of service requirements. References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_Tunnel] \| [TOKENS: 332]
Contents Screaming Tunnel The Screaming Tunnel is a small limestone tunnel, running underneath what once was a Grand Trunk Railway line (now the Canadian National Railway). It was located in the northwest corner of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. The actual location of the attraction is just off War. It was originally built for a North to South line for the Grand Trunk Railway. But the plans were changed. Some say the reason was lack of funding, but the actual reason is unknown. The tunnel was abandoned and used as drainage tunnel so the water could be removed from the farmlands nearby.[citation needed] This water would go underneath the Grand Trunk Railway and down to the valley below. Throughout the 20th century, farmers used this tunnel to transport goods and animals safely underneath the busy railroad above. The tunnel, constructed at some point in the 19th century, is 16 feet (4.9 m) in height and 125 feet (38 m) long. A local legend recounts that the tunnel is haunted by the ghost of a young woman whose clothing had caught fire. She died in the tunnel trying to find the nearest house. All versions of these legends end with the girl's screams filling up the tunnel as she was burning to death. The tunnel was used as a set during the filming of David Cronenberg's 1983 film adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel The Dead Zone. References External links 43°08′43″N 79°08′42″W / 43.14518°N 79.14497°W / 43.14518; -79.14497
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uncensored_Library] \| [TOKENS: 577]
Contents The Uncensored Library The Uncensored Library is a Minecraft server and map released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and created by BlockWorks, DDB Berlin, and .monks as an attempt to circumvent censorship in countries without freedom of the press. The library contains banned reporting from Mexico, Russia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Brazil, Belarus, Iran and Eritrea. An entire wing is given to each country, each containing several banned articles placed in virtual books. The library was released on March 12, 2020, the World Day Against Cyber Censorship. The two ways to access the library are to download a map from the official website, or to connect to their Minecraft server. Design The library is a large scale project built using a neoclassical architectural style. It is intended to resemble well-established institutions such as the New York Public Library and the Thomas Jefferson Building which houses the Library of Congress, as well as stylistically allude to the authoritarian structures the project aims to subvert. The library uses over 12.5 million Minecraft blocks. Format Each of the nine countries covered by the library, as well as Reporters without Borders, has an individual wing, containing a number of articles, available in English and the original language the article was written in. The texts within the library are contained in in-game book items, which can be opened and placed on stands to be read by multiple players at once. These articles generally discuss censorship, unjust punishment, and other critiques of the writer's government. The interior architecture of each country's room symbolizes each country's unique situation and journalistic challenges. Additionally, the library contains a central room listing the Press Freedom Index and state of freedom of the press of every country covered by the index, and the Mexican section contains memorials for reporters who were killed due to their writings. In March 2020, the library contained over 200 different books. A room in the library covers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on journalism, containing books on 10 countries (Brazil, China, Egypt, Hungary, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, Thailand and Turkmenistan) to show how reporting of the virus in each country has been affected. Reception After launch, the project went viral across social media platforms and has been featured in various media outlets such as Agence France-Presse, the BBC, DW News, CNBC, CNN, TechCrunch, The Verge, Gizmodo, Engadget, Mashable, PC Gamer and Scene World Magazine. The project also received a 2022 Peabody Award for the Interactive category. When awarding The Uncensored Library with their Peabody Award, Peabody's website described the library as "a monument to press freedom and an innovative back door for access to censored content." Notes References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_urban_legend] \| [TOKENS: 2519]
Contents Lighthouse and naval vessel urban legend The lighthouse and naval vessel urban legend describes an encounter between a large naval ship and what at first appears to be another vessel, with which the ship is on a collision course. The naval vessel, usually identified as of the United States Navy or the United Kingdom's Royal Navy and generally described as a battleship or aircraft carrier, requests that the other ship change course. The other party, generally identified as Canadian or often Irish and occasionally Spanish, responds that the naval vessel should change course, whereupon the captain of the naval vessel reiterates the demand, identifying himself and the ship he commands and sometimes making threats. This elicits the response "I'm a lighthouse. Your call." or something similar, a punchline which has become shorthand for the entire anecdote. It has circulated on the Internet and elsewhere in particular since a 1995 version that was claimed to be a transcript of such a communication released by the office of the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations. There is no evidence that the event actually took place, and the account is implausible. It is thus considered an urban legend, a variation on a joke that dates to at least the 1930s, sometimes referred to as "the lighthouse vs. the carrier" or "the lighthouse vs. the battleship". The U.S. Navy once had a webpage debunking it, although this did not stop the former U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell using it as a joke in a 2008 speech. Other speakers have often used it simply as a parable teaching the dangers of inflexibility and self-importance, or the need for situational awareness. In 2004, a Swedish company dramatized it in an award-winning television advertisement. Example A commonly circulated version goes thus: This is the transcript of a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95. Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision. Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision. Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course. Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course. Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that's one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship. Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call. Other vessels sometimes named in the transcript include the carriers Enterprise, Coral Sea and Nimitz, and the Missouri, a battleship. The location of the exchange has also sometimes been claimed to be Puget Sound along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington, or off the coast of North Carolina, some other times the lighthouse is located at Cape Finisterre in Spain. The Spanish version expands the joke by having the lighthouse keeper respond to the aircraft carrier's inventory of the fleet by saying he's accompanied by "our dog, our food, two beers, and a canary that's currently asleep." Some versions relocate it to the Irish or Scottish coasts; in the former case the ship is sometimes identified as British, with the conversation taking place off the coast of County Kerry, Ireland, in 1998. There is sometimes an additional line of dialogue where the lighthouse keeper tells the ship captain he is a Seaman First Class before the final exchange. The prefatory information sometimes notes it was released in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act, or names Jeremy Boorda, the incumbent Chief of Naval Operations on the stated date. Debunking The Virginian-Pilot, the daily newspaper in Norfolk, Virginia, a city with a large naval presence, investigated the story after it had begun circulating extensively on and off the Internet in 1995. A spokesman for the Atlantic Fleet called it "a totally bogus story". Boorda's office said it had not released any such transcript on the date in question. And not only was the story an old one, the ships commonly named in it were mostly either out of service by 1995 (the Coral Sea, for example, had been scrapped two years before) or not aircraft carriers. Other sources the paper consulted found more flaws with the story. A spokesman for the Coast Guard, which operates all American lighthouses, said that they had all long since been automated, so there would have been no keeper to talk to a ship, if the incident had taken place in US waters. He speculated that it had been circulated by members of the Coast Guard to make fun of the Navy. Four years later, in response to a report that a consultant continued to tell the story at speeches as if it were true, Fast Company talked to Wayne Wheeler, a former Coast Guardsman who was then head of an enthusiasts' group called the US Lighthouse Society. He confirmed that it was an old story, and that in his experience an incident of this type involving lighthouses was highly unlikely: First, a lighthouse doesn't look anything like a ship. Unless the weather's really foggy—and most versions of the story don't mention fog – you can see a lighthouse from far away as a fixed white light that flashes at a set number of seconds. On the other hand, ships are usually moving and have smaller, colored lights at the fore and aft. There's absolutely no way to mistake one for the other. A Canadian lighthouse keeper, Jim Abram of British Columbia, agreed. "I've been lighthouse keeping for 21 years, ... and no one's ever thought that I was in anything but a lighthouse." The Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) calls it "easily believable if you are not familiar with how the Navy operates or simple things such as GPS." In addition to the historical inaccuracies with most of the ships named, the organization notes on its blog the extreme improbability that an aircraft carrier's crew would not realize they were off the coast of a landmass such as Newfoundland. The MOAA claimed, in 2009, to receive it in forwarded email an average of three times a day. "[After] fifty times the only interesting part about it is to see which details have been changed." History The earliest known version of the joke appeared in a single-panel cartoon in the London weekly tabloid The Humorist, and was reproduced by the Canadian newspaper The Drumheller Review in 1931. It showed two men standing by their rails, shouting through megaphones: Skipper: Where are you going with your blinking ship? The Other: "This isn't a blinking ship. It's a lighthouse!" In August 1934, the London weekly Answers, founded by Alfred Harmsworth in 1888, expanded the cartoon into a humorous anecdote, which was reprinted on both sides of the Atlantic. This version read: There was a dense summer fog and the officer on the bridge was becoming more and more exasperated. As he leaned over the side of the bridge trying to pierce the gloom, he saw a hazy figure leaning on a rail a few yards from his ship. He almost choked. "What do you think you're doing with your blinking ship?" he roared. "Don't you know the rules of the sea? "This ain't no blinkin' ship, guv'nor," said a quiet voice; "this 'ere's a light'ouse!" Variants appeared in humor books and periodicals over the next several decades. In 1943, Raphael Tuck & Sons issued a postcard version, with an illustration of the prow of an ocean liner and passing a uniformed man at the rail of a similar object: "Where the ell are you going on your perishin' ship? / This ain't no ship, it's a lighthouse!" Steven Covey told his own version in his 1989 bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Covey in turn cited an issue of Proceedings published two years earlier. Isaac Asimov included it in a 1992 humor anthology. Since 1995, the story continues to be told, albeit with some awareness that it is probably fictional. In 2004 Silva compass, a Swedish maker of marine navigational equipment, dramatized it in a television ad called "The Captain". Its version was set in the Irish Sea, with the ship called the USS Montana and an Irish lighthouse keeper. The advertisement, filmed in English with Swedish subtitles, won a Bronze Lion at that year's Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Four years later, in 2008, retired Admiral Mike McConnell, then United States Director of National Intelligence, used the anecdote at the beginning of a speech at Johns Hopkins University. He insisted it was a true story. "I was in the signals intelligence business where you listen to the people talk and so on", he told his listeners beforehand. "This is true. It's an actual recording." When he was later questioned on this, a spokesman said those statements were meant merely to set the audience up. "It's a technique—comedians use it all the time to get the audience to buy in". Interpretations Most commentators who have used it in speeches or books point to it as Mikkelson does, "a lesson in the unimportance of self-importance". Felix Dennis, in whose retelling the story, represented as true, takes place off the coast of British Columbia, calls it his "favorite story about the 'infallibility' of power". He comments: Oh, boy. Naturally that officer of the watch can never have lived it down. He will be nicknamed "Your Call" or "Lighthouse" until the day he retires. All those years of saluting and keeping his nose to the grindstone destroyed in moments, because he believed the sun shone out of his backside. Others, particularly those writing about management for business audiences, see it as demonstrating the need for flexibility. Barry Maher calls the intractability of some listeners the Abraham Lincoln Syndrome after the ship named in his version of the anecdote, which he also represents as true. "When the person you're dealing with refuses to let you go where you want to go, divert your course", he advises salespeople, echoing the language in the story. "Smashing into lighthouses is not a successful navigational strategy—no matter how pushy those lighthouses might be." Within a marital context, Gary Smalley uses it to advise husbands trying to reconcile with their wives that "like the navy captain's attempts to manipulate the lighthouse, your attempts to control the situation could cause your wife to become an immovable rock and resent you more deeply". Another interpretation of the story emphasizes situational awareness. The media consultant Phil Cooke tells the story, conceding that it is fictional, and uses it to demonstrate the importance of the research he reads, and knowing one's audience in particular. "We're blind unless we know who we're talking to." "[W]hile it is [the captain']s ship, it's most definitely not his ocean" writes Russ Linden, a columnist at Governing, of the lesson offered. Some speakers think the anecdote is an overused cliché. Alan Stevens, president of the Global Speakers Federation, noted that Covey was still using it in speeches in 2010, and reported that the same week he heard him use it, a client emailed him that two speakers at a political event she attended had used it. He tells those giving speeches to avoid not only the lighthouse story, but the boiling frog story and the story about a young boy throwing beached starfish back into the sea. "They may have happened once, but they won't have happened to the storyteller. What's worse, they are used so often, they have lost their impact." They should instead follow his example and tell stories of things that actually happened to them or that they did themselves. See also Notes References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_black] \| [TOKENS: 875]
Contents Men in black In popular culture and UFO conspiracy theories, men in black (MIB) are government agents dressed in dark suits, who question, interrogate, harass, and threaten unidentified flying object (UFO) witnesses to keep them silent about what they have seen. The term is also frequently used to describe mysterious men working for unknown organizations, as well as various branches of government allegedly tasked with protecting government UFO secrets or performing other strange activities. They are typically described as tall men with expressionless faces, slightly pale skin, and usually wearing black suits with black sunglasses. “Men In Black” encounters are very common tales told in American UFO conspiracy theories. The term is generic, as it is used for any unusual, threatening or strangely behaved individual whose appearance on the scene can be linked in some fashion with a UFO sighting. Stories about men in black inspired the science fiction comedy franchise Men in Black and an album by the Stranglers. Folklore Folklorist James R. Lewis compares accounts of men in black with tales of people encountering Lucifer, and speculates that they can be considered a kind of "psychological trauma". Ufologists Men in black feature prominently in ufology, UFO folklore, and fan fiction. In the 1950s and 1960s, ufologists adopted a conspiratorial mindset and began fearing they would be subject to organized intimidation in retaliation for discovering "the truth of the UFOs". In 1947, Harold Dahl claimed a man in a dark suit warned him not to discuss his alleged UFO sighting on Maury Island. In the mid-1950s, ufologist Albert K. Bender claimed he was visited by men in dark suits who threatened and warned him not to continue investigating UFOs. He maintained that the men were secret government agents tasked with suppressing evidence of UFOs. Ufologist John Keel claimed to have had encounters with MIB and referred to them as "demonic supernaturals" with "dark skin and/or 'exotic' facial features". According to ufologist Jerome Clark, reports of men in black represent "experiences" that "don't seem to have occurred in the world of consensus reality". Historian Aaron Gulyas wrote: "During the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, UFO conspiracy theorists would incorporate the MIB into their increasingly complex and paranoid visions." Keel has argued that some MIB encounters could be explained as entirely mundane events perpetuated through folklore. In his book The Mothman Prophecies (1975), he describes a late-night outing in 1967, where he was mistaken for an MIB while searching for a phone to call a tow truck. In his article "Gray Barker: My Friend, the Myth-Maker", John C. Sherwood claims that, in the late 1960s, at age 18, he cooperated when Gray Barker urged him to develop a hoax—which Barker subsequently published—about what Barker called "blackmen", three mysterious UFO inhabitants who silenced Sherwood's pseudonymous identity, "Dr. Richard H. Pratt". In popular culture Songs that reference the urban legend include "E.T.I (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)" by the Blue Öyster Cult (1976), "Meninblack" by The Stranglers (1979), "Men in Black" by Frank Black, and"Men in Black" by Running Wild (1995). In 1981, The Stranglers also released a concept album, The Gospel According to the Meninblack. The Alien Encounters (1979) features Men in Black who harass a UFO investigator. In The Brother from Another Planet (1984), two Men in Black try to capture the alien protagonist. The 1997 science-fiction film Men In Black, starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, was loosely based on The Men in Black comic book series created by Lowell Cunningham and Sandy Carruthers. Also that year, television movie The Shadow Men presented a more serious take on the concept. Men in Black also appear in television series, The X-Files. The video game franchise Half-Life features a character known as the G-Man, widely regarded as a pastiche of the concept. The Men in Black also feature in Deus Ex as agents of Majestic 12. See also References Further reading
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spooklight] \| [TOKENS: 830]
Contents The Spooklight The Spooklight (also called the Hornet Spooklight, Hollis Light and Joplin Spook Light) is an atmospheric ghost light on the border between southwestern Missouri and northeastern Oklahoma, a few miles west of the small town of Hornet, Missouri. It is caused by the misidentification of distant car headlights.36°56′38.18″N 94°38′34.80″W / 36.9439389°N 94.6430000°W / 36.9439389; -94.6430000 Origin and history An east to west stretch of Route 66, south of Quapaw, Oklahoma, is in alignment with a farm road called E 50, colloquially known as "Spooklight Road", about ten miles (16 km) east of it, on the other side of Spring River. Due to this alignment, headlights of cars driving east on Route 66 are unexpectedly visible in the distance from higher elevation points along E 50; this is the cause of the Spooklight. The first to recognize this in print was AB MacDonald in a January 1936 issue of the Kansas City Star. This has been demonstrated repeatedly by experiments in which fireworks, spot lights, and flashing car headlights along Route 66 have been seen by observers posted on Spooklight Road. Some instances of these staged experiments were in 1946 by Thomas Sheard, in 1955 by a group from Kansas City, by Robert Gannon in 1965, and by Allen Rice and his "Boomers" sleuths in 2015. As with most other supposed ghost lights, storytellers have created mythologies about the Spooklight to purport that it existed before cars but none of these claims can be verified by any printed sources. Thorough research by journalist Paul W. Johns found that there are no records of any mention of the Spooklight in print until after 1926, which is the year that that section of Route 66 was designated. In the 1960s, there was a Spooklight museum at the eastern end of E 50. In the Popular Mechanics article, Gannon called it a "tourist trap that doesn't quite make it". It had a three-inch (76 mm) telescope that allowed people to view the light for 25 cents, but the owners had set it up indoors to look through a half inch hole in the wall, which stopped down the aperture so much it couldn't resolve anything. According to the proprietor, this was done to protect it from the rain. Gannon brought with him a comparable telescope, and said that, although the naked eye perceived one light, his telescope plainly split the Spooklight into car headlights that always came in pairs. Belief in the supposed mystery of the Spooklight has for generations been promoted by local businesses and chambers of commerce who embrace it as an opportunity for tourism revenue. In 1969, the Missouri Chamber of Commerce ran a press release in many newspapers that included the false statement, "Scientists, however, using various technical devices, have not been successful in determining a theory as to the origin of the light." The Joplin Chamber of Commerce published a visitor guidebook, The Tri-State Spook Light, in 1955, and the Neosho Chamber of Commerce published its own tourist booklet in 1963. In the 1950s, the Missouri Division of the U.S. Brewers Foundation ran newspaper ads promoting the Spooklight, suggesting that they thought it would lead to increased beer sales to tourists. Mythology Numerous legends exist explaining the origin of the Spooklight: In the online lore about the Spooklight, it's often repeated that someone, possibly named Foster Young, published some kind of manuscript entitled The Ozark Spook Light sometime in the 1880s; this is asserted as a rebuttal to the distant headlight explanation, but no evidence has been produced that either the document or the claimed author ever existed. See also Bibliography References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-eyed_children] \| [TOKENS: 606]
Contents Black-eyed children Black-eyed children (or black-eyed kids) are legendary paranormal creatures originating in modern American folklore, which superficially resemble human children or teenagers with pale skin and pitch-black eyes. They are reportedly seen begging or hitchhiking, or are encountered on doorsteps of residential homes. These beings are alleged to be either undead, ghostly, demonic, alien, or otherwise inhuman creatures attempting to impersonate ordinary human children, in order to manipulate people by requesting entry into houses or riding in vehicles, with supposedly sinister motives. History While tabloid coverage of these creatures has claimed that tales of black-eyed children have existed since the 1980s, most sources indicate that the legend originated from 1996 postings written by Texas reporter Brian Bethel on a "ghost-related mailing list," relating two alleged encounters with "black-eyed kids." Bethel describes encountering two such children in Abilene, Texas, in 1996, and claims that a second person had a similar, unrelated encounter in Portland, Oregon. Bethel's stories have become regarded as classic examples of creepypasta; his stories gained such popularity that he published a FAQ "just to keep up with demand for more info about the new urban legend." In 2012, Brian Bethel told his story on reality TV series Monsters and Mysteries in America. He wrote a follow-up article for the Abilene Reporter News, describing his experience and maintaining his belief that it was legitimate. In 2012, the horror film Black Eyed Kids was produced with Kickstarter funding; its director commenting that the creepy children were "an urban legend that's been floating around on the Internet for years now, I always thought it was fascinating." A 2013 episode of MSN's Weekly Strange that featured reports of black-eyed children is thought to have helped spread the legend on the internet. During one week in September 2014, the tabloid Daily Star ran three sensationalistic front-page stories about alleged sightings of black-eyed children, connected to the sale of a supposedly haunted pub in Staffordshire. The paper claimed a "shock rise in sightings around the world". Alleged sightings are taken seriously by ghost hunters, some of whom believe black-eyed children to be extraterrestrials, vampires, or ghosts. Science writer Sharon A. Hill was unable to find any documentation of black-eyed child encounters, concluding that the tales are passed on as "friend of a friend" ghost stories. Hill considers the legend to resemble "typical spooky folklore stories" such as the phantom black dog, where the subject is not supernatural, and there may never have been an actual original encounter. Snopes rates tales of black-eyed children as a legend, and cites an Inquisitr article that advised readers to "(f)ile black eyed children under the same heading as 'bigfoot'. Believe it if you like, but realize that there is no evidence of their existence, just subjective testimony that ranges from reasonable to suspiciously fame-whoring". See also References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Cox_myth] \| [TOKENS: 1705]
Contents Swordfish (film) Swordfish is a 2001 American action thriller film directed by Dominic Sena, written by Skip Woods, produced by Joel Silver, and starring John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, Vinnie Jones, and Sam Shepard. Stanley Jobson is an ex-con and computer hacker who is recruited into a bank robbery conspiracy. Swordfish was released by Warner Bros. Pictures on June 8, 2001. The film received mostly negative reviews, and grossed over $147.1 million in worldwide box office receipts on a production budget of $102 million. Plot Cyber-hacker Stanley Jobson becomes notorious for infecting the FBI's Carnivore program with a computer virus. Stanley's parole forbids him from accessing the internet and computers while his ex-wife, Melissa, an alcoholic and part-time porn star, issued a restraining order against him. This also prevents him from seeing his daughter, Holly. Ginger Knowles persuades Stanley to work for Gabriel Shear, who forces him into cracking a secure Defense Department server. After the hack, Gabriel offers Stanley $10 million to program a multi-headed worm, a "hydra", to siphon $9.5 billion from the government slush funds. Stanley begins work on the worm, learning that Gabriel leads Black Cell, a secret organization created by J. Edgar Hoover to attack terrorists that threaten the United States. He also privately discovers Ginger is a DEA agent working undercover and is further surprised to discover a corpse that resembles Gabriel. After taking Holly home from school, Stanley discovers he is being followed by FBI agent J.T. Roberts, who had previously arrested him. Roberts, though monitoring Stanley, is more interested in Gabriel as he does not appear on any government database, and after learning that another hacker, Axl Torvalds, was killed by Gabriel's men, warns Stanley to be cautious. Stanley opts to secretly code a backdoor in his hydra that reverses the money transfer after a short period. Meanwhile, Senator Jim Reisman, who oversees Black Cell, learns the FBI started tracking Gabriel and orders him to stand down. He refuses and defeats a hit team dispatched against him by Reisman. In retaliation, Gabriel kills him and continues his plan. Stanley delivers the hydra to Gabriel and leaves to spend time with Holly, only to find that Gabriel's men abducted her and framed him for the murders of Melissa and her porn producer husband. He is then forced to participate in a bank heist to get Holly back. At the site of the heist, Gabriel and his men storm a branch and secure its employees and customers as hostages, fitting each of them with ball-bearing-based explosives similar to Claymore mines. When police and FBI surround the branch, Gabriel takes Stanley to a nearby coffee shop across the street to meet with Roberts, but Gabriel spends the time discussing the film Dog Day Afternoon and the nature of misdirection. In the bank, Gabriel has one of his men escort a hostage out to demonstrate how they are rigged with explosives, so a sharpshooter kills the man. As other agents start to pull the hostage away from the bank, the bomb detonates, decimating her and much of the street. Gabriel instructs Stanley to launch the hydra and turns Holly over to him once completed. However, the back door triggers before they can leave the bank, leading to Stanley being recaptured while Holly is rescued. Gabriel threatens to kill Ginger, whom he knows is a DEA agent, unless Stanley re-siphons the money back to a Monte Carlo bank. Although Stanley complies, Gabriel shoots down Ginger. Gabriel and his men load the hostages onto a bus and demand a plane wait for them at the local airport, but while en route, the bus is lifted off by a Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane and carried across the city. The bus is then deposited on the roof of a skyscraper, where Gabriel deactivates the bombs and attempts to escape with his surviving men on a waiting helicopter. Stanley shoots down the helicopter using a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) that Gabriel's men had left on the bus. Roberts takes Stanley to verify a corpse they found, believing Gabriel was a Mossad agent. There is no record of a DEA agent named Ginger Knowles, and her body was not found. Stanley recognizes the corpse as the one he discovered earlier and realizes that the whole scenario was a deception; Ginger was wearing a bulletproof vest and was working with Gabriel all along, who escaped via a different route. Despite Stanley not telling the police that Gabriel and Ginger are still alive, Roberts arranges for Stanley to have full custody of Holly, where they depart to places elsewhere. In Monte Carlo, Gabriel and Ginger withdraw the stolen money and later watch as a yacht at sea explodes. A news report reveals the destruction of the yacht, carrying a known terrorist, as the third such incident in weeks. Cast Production The opening explosion was the most complicated visual effect in the film. It was shot using "Matrix-like effects" by Frantic Films. The effect has so many composites in it that the producers and director Dominic Sena could not determine what was real and what was created by computer. The dramatic explosion at the start of the film was captured using 135 synchronized still cameras. Reception Swordfish received early press coverage because word leaked out that Halle Berry was doing her first topless scene, and paid an extra $500,000 on top of her $2 million fee. Critics said the scene looked forced, just to garner press. "Halle Berry Nude" jumped to the top of search engine results. Berry said she did the topless scene, knowing it was gratuitous, to overcome the fear of appearing nude onscreen. As of 2024, 26% of the 139 reviews compiled on Rotten Tomatoes are positive, with an average rating of 4.35/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Swordfish is big on explosions, but critics dislike how it skimps on plot and logic. Also, the sight of a person typing at a computer just isn't that interesting." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 32 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale. In a review for The Washington Post, Desson Howe described the film as "an action opera designed to elicit Beavis and Butt-head-level appreciation, rather than effete applause from the critics". In a review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden described the film as "a meticulously choreographed bang-by-the-numbers action fantasy that I would accuse of peddling evil if the film weren't so dumb and incoherent", concluding that: With its blasé blend of bogus international intrigue and action-for-action's-sake, Swordfish suggests a James Bond movie stripped of humor. True, there are a few moments of wit, like the opening sequence. But the dominant tone masquerading as humor is a snide, rancid nihilism devoid of laughs, unless wholesale destruction and gloating stupidity are what tickle your funny bone. The film grossed over $147 million in worldwide box office receipts on a production budget of $102 million. John Travolta's performance in the film earned him a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actor (also for Domestic Disturbance). Soundtrack The soundtrack was produced by Paul Oakenfold, under Village Roadshow and Warner Bros. and distributed through London Sire Records, Inc. It contains 15 tracks. The film's orchestral score was written by Christopher Young with several electronic additions by Paul Oakenfold. Fragments from the score were added to the official soundtrack but were remixed by Oakenfold. A more complete release was issued as an award promo, which is known for its rarity. Rodney Cox myth The Rodney Cox myth is an urban legend which purports that a man, whose name is sometimes given as Robert Cox, was personally executed by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson for treason. There is no substantive evidence that Cox existed or that Jefferson personally executed anybody, yet the urban legend has persisted. The rumor seems to originate from Swordfish, which presents the story. References External links
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