Most viewed Wikipedia articles on December 12 , 2015
Solomon Northup was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color. A farmer and a professional violinist, Northup had been a landowner in Hebron, New York. In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician's job and went to Washington, D.C. ; there he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold as a slave. He was shipped to New Orleans, purchased by a planter, and held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, mostly in Avoyelles Parish. He remained a slave until he met a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends enlisted the aid of the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.
Francis Albert Sinatra was an American singer, actor and producer who was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide.
Web scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction is data scraping used for extracting data from websites. Web scraping software may access the World Wide Web directly using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or through a web browser. While web scraping can be done manually by a software user, the term typically refers to automated processes implemented using a bot or web crawler. It is a form of copying, in which specific data is gathered and copied from the web, typically into a central local database or spreadsheet, for later retrieval or analysis.
The 2016 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2016 or simply Euro 2016, was the 15th UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europe organised by UEFA. It was held in France from 10 June to 10 July 2016. Spain were the two-time defending champions, having won the 2008 and 2012 tournaments, but were eliminated in the round of 16 by Italy. Portugal won the tournament for the first time, following a 1–0 victory after extra time over the host team, France, in the final played at the Stade de France.
The Ridiculous 6 is a 2015 American Western action comedy film directed by Frank Coraci and written by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler. Starring Sandler, Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Taylor Lautner, Rob Schneider and Luke Wilson, the plot follows six men who discover that they share the same bank-robbing father, and thereafter set out to reunite with him.
UFC 194: Aldo vs. McGregor was a mixed martial arts event held by the Ultimate Fighting Championship on December 12, 2015 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Conor Anthony McGregor is an Irish professional mixed martial artist and boxer. He is a former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) featherweight and lightweight champion. As of 25 January 2021, he is ranked #15 in the UFC men's pound-for-pound rankings and as of 24 December 2020, he is #6 in the UFC lightweight rankings.
Star Wars is an American epic space opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has been expanded into various films and other media, including television series, video games, novels, comic books, theme park attractions, and themed areas, comprising an all-encompassing fictional universe. In 2020, its total value was estimated at US$70 billion, and it is currently the fifth-highest-grossing media franchise of all time.
Flashpoint is a 2011 comic book crossover story arc published by DC Comics. Consisting of an eponymous core limited series and a number of tie-in titles, the storyline premiered in May 2011. The core miniseries was written by Geoff Johns and pencilled by Andy Kubert. In its end, the series radically changes the status quo for the DC Universe, leading into the publisher's 2011 relaunch, The New 52.
Java is a class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let application developers write once, run anywhere (WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need for recompilation. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of the underlying computer architecture. The syntax of Java is similar to C and C++, but has fewer low-level facilities than either of them. The Java runtime provides dynamic capabilities that are typically not available in traditional compiled languages. As of 2019, Java was one of the most popular programming languages in use according to GitHub, particularly for client-server web applications, with a reported 9 million developers.
Donald John Trump is an American politician who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.
Apocalypse is a fictional supervillain appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. He is one of the world's first mutants, and was originally a principal villain for the original X-Factor team and now for the X-Men and related spinoff teams. Created by writer Louise Simonson and artist Jackson Guice, Apocalypse first appeared in X-Factor #5. Apocalypse is one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel universe.
The Army–Navy Game is an American college football rivalry game between the Army Black Knights of the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York, and the Navy Midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy (USNA) at Annapolis, Maryland. The Black Knights, or Cadets, and Midshipmen each represent their service's oldest officer commissioning sources. As such, the game has come to embody the spirit of the interservice rivalry of the United States Armed Forces. The game marks the end of the college football regular season and the third and final game of the season's Commander-in-Chief's Trophy series, which also includes the Air Force Falcons of the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) near Colorado Springs, Colorado.
José Aldo da Silva Oliveira Júnior, commonly anglicized as Jose Aldo, is a Brazilian professional mixed martial artist. He currently competes in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). He was the fourth and final WEC Featherweight Champion, becoming the first UFC Featherweight Champion after the UFC/WEC merger. He is a former three-time UFC featherweight champion overall, having been the undisputed champion twice and the interim champion once. As of December 24, 2020, he is #6 in the UFC bantamweight rankings.
Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua, is a British professional boxer. He is a two-time unified world heavyweight champion, having held the WBA (Super), IBF, WBO, and IBO titles since December 2019, and previously between 2016 and June 2019. At regional level, he held the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles from 2015 to 2016.
The Shield Tablet, later relaunched as the Shield Tablet K1, is a gaming tablet, developed by Nvidia and released on July 29, 2014. It was Nvidia's second portable gaming device that uses Android. Compared to the Shield Portable, the controller is not permanently connected to the screen, rather it can be purchased separately. Up to four controllers can be wirelessly connected at the same time. While the Shield tablet features an 8-inch 1920×1200 pixel display, it can output 4K resolution signal to a television via HDMI.
Frank James Edgar is an American professional mixed martial artist, who competes as a Bantamweight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and is a former UFC lightweight champion. He holds notable victories over former world champions Sean Sherk, Hermes França, B.J. Penn (x3), Urijah Faber as well as top featherweight contenders Cub Swanson (x2) and Chad Mendes. As of December 24, 2020, he is #4 in the UFC bantamweight rankings
Dolly Rebecca Parton is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actress, author, businesswoman, and humanitarian, known primarily for her work in country music. After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Parton made her album debut in 1967 with Hello, I'm Dolly, which led to success during the remainder of the 1960s, before her sales and chart peak came during the 1970s and continued into the 1980s. Parton's albums in the 1990s did not sell as well, but she achieved commercial success again in the new millennium and has released albums on various independent labels since 2000, including her own label, Dolly Records. She has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.
This is a list of notable deaths, organized by year. New deaths articles are added to their respective month, and then linked here.
Dulce María Espinosa Saviñón de Álvarez is a Mexican singer, songwriter, actress and author.
Sir Roderick David Stewart is a British rock and pop singer, songwriter and record producer. With his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold over 250 million records worldwide. He has had ten number-one albums and 31 top ten singles in the UK, six of which reached number one. Stewart has had 16 top ten singles in the US, with four reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity.
Jessica Campbell Jones Cage is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos and first appeared in Alias #1, as part of Marvel's Max, an imprint for more mature content. Within the context of Marvel's shared universe, Jones is a former superhero who becomes the owner of Alias Private Investigations. Bendis originally envisioned the series centered on Jessica Drew and only decided to create Jones once he noticed that the main character had a distinct voice and background that differentiated her from Drew.
Krampus is a horned, anthropomorphic figure in Alpine folklore who during the Christmas season scares children who have misbehaved, assisting Saint Nicholas. The pair visit children on the night of the 5th December and Saint Nicholas rewards the well-behaved children with modest gifts such as oranges, dried fruit, walnuts and chocolate whilst the badly behaved ones only receive punishment with birch rods.
Steven Paul Jobs was an American business magnate, industrial designer, investor, and media proprietor. He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and co-founder of Apple Inc., the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar, a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar, and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Marvel's Jessica Jones, or simply Jessica Jones, is an American television series created by Melissa Rosenberg for the streaming service Netflix, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), sharing continuity with the films of the franchise, and is the second in a series of shows that led to The Defenders crossover miniseries. The series is produced by Marvel Television in association with ABC Studios and Tall Girls Productions, with Rosenberg serving as showrunner. Scott Reynolds was a co-showrunner for the third season.
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, is an English singer-songwriter. After graduating from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a recording contract with XL Recordings. In 2007, she received the Brit Awards Critics' Choice Award and won the BBC Sound of 2008 poll. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008. It is certified 8× platinum in the UK and triple platinum in the US. The album contains her first song, "Hometown Glory", written when she was 16, which is based on her home suburb of West Norwood in London. An appearance she made on Saturday Night Live in late 2008 boosted her career in the US. At the 2009 Grammy Awards, Adele won the awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
Chad Mendes is an American retired professional mixed martial artist, who competed as a Featherweight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
Harry Morgan was an American actor and director whose television and film career spanned six decades. Morgan's major roles included Pete Porter in both December Bride (1954–1959) and Pete and Gladys (1960–1962); Officer Bill Gannon on Dragnet (1967–1970); Amos Coogan on Hec Ramsey (1972–1974); and his starring role as Colonel Sherman T. Potter in M*A*S*H (1975–1983) and AfterMASH (1983–1985). Morgan appeared in more than 100 films.
Joy is a 2015 American biographical comedy-drama film, written and directed by David O. Russell and starring Jennifer Lawrence as Joy Mangano, a self-made millionaire who created her own business empire.
This is a list of Bollywood films that were released in 2015.
This is a list of the longest winning streaks in National Basketball Association (NBA) history. The list includes streaks that started at the end of one season and carried over into the following season. There are two lists, streaks that consist entirely of regular-season games and streaks made up of playoff games only. The Los Angeles Lakers hold the record for the longest winning streak in NBA history. They won 33 straight games in the 1971–72 season, compiling a season-best 69–13 record and went on to win the NBA Finals. In the 2016–17 season, the Golden State Warriors posted a season-best 67–15 regular-season record and began the 2017 playoffs with a 15-game win-streak, the most consecutive wins in NBA playoff history. They went on to win the NBA Championship with a 16–1 record, the best playoff record in NBA history.
In the Heart of the Sea is a 2015 historical adventure-drama film directed and produced by Ron Howard and written by Charles Leavitt. It is based on Nathaniel Philbrick's 2000 non-fiction book of the same name, about the sinking of the American whaling ship Essex in 1820, an event that inspired Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. An international co-production between the United States and Spain, the film stars Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson.
Wardell Stephen "Steph" Curry II is an American professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Many analysts and players have called him the greatest shooter in NBA history. He is credited with revolutionizing the game of basketball by inspiring teams to regularly utilize the three-point shot. A six-time NBA All-Star, Curry has been named the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) twice and has won three NBA championships with the Warriors.
Dillian Whyte is a British professional boxer, and former kickboxer and mixed martial artist. He held the WBC interim heavyweight title from 2019 to 2020. At regional level, he has held multiple heavyweight titles, including the British title from 2016 to 2017. As of December 2020, he is ranked as the world's fifth best active heavyweight by The Ring magazine and seventh by BoxRec and the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board. He has been ranked among BoxRec's top 10 heavyweights since 2016, reaching his career-high ranking of No.5 at the conclusion of 2018. As of 2020, Whyte has won three fights rated by BoxRec as 5-Star. His knockout-to-win percentage stands at 72%.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe, is a Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary associated with a series of five Marian apparitions in December 1531, and a venerated image on a cloak enshrined within the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The basilica is the most-visited Catholic shrine in the world, and the world's third most-visited sacred site.
Dilwale is a 2015 Indian Hindi-language romantic action comedy film produced by Gauri Khan and directed by Rohit Shetty. The film is distributed by Red Chillies Entertainment. The film's dialogue was written by Sajid-Farhad and the soundtrack was composed by Pritam. It stars Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in their seventh film together alongside Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon in the lead roles.
Hate Story 3 is a 2015 Indian Hindi-language erotic thriller film directed by Vishal Pandya. Produced by T-Series, it stars Sharman Joshi, Karan Singh Grover, Zareen Khan and Daisy Shah in lead roles, and Priyanshu Chatterjee in a pivotal role. Written by Vikram Bhatt and Madhuri Banerji, the film is part of the Hate Story film series. The film was released on 4 December 2015 and was a box office success.
Star Wars is a 1977 American epic space-opera film written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker and Peter Mayhew. It is the first installment of the original Star Wars trilogy, the first of the franchise to be produced, and the fourth episode of the "Skywalker saga".
Taylor Josephine Stephanie Luciow, known by her stage name Taylor Mitchell, was a Canadian country folk singer and songwriter from Toronto. Her debut and only album, For Your Consideration, received encouraging reviews and airplay. Following a busy summer performance schedule, which included an appearance as a young performer at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, Taylor embarked on a tour of Eastern Canada with a newly acquired license and car.
The Revenant is a 2015 American epic Revisionist Western film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. The screenplay by Mark L. Smith and Iñárritu is based in part on Michael Punke's 2002 novel of the same name, which describes frontiersman Hugh Glass's experiences in 1823; that novel is, in turn, based on the 1915 poem The Song of Hugh Glass. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, and Will Poulter.
Justin Pierre James Trudeau is a Canadian politician who has served as the 23rd prime minister of Canada since 2015 and has been the leader of the Liberal Party since 2013. Trudeau is the second-youngest prime minister in Canadian history; he is also the first to be the child or other relative of a previous holder of the post, as the eldest son of Pierre Trudeau.
The X Factor is a British television music competition to find new singing talent. The twelfth series began airing on ITV on 29 August 2015 and ended on 13 December 2015. The judges were Simon Cowell, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, who returned for their respective ninth and fifth series as judges, series 9 guest judge and former The Voice UK coach Rita Ora, and BBC Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw, with Grimshaw and Ora replacing Louis Walsh, the only judge who had been on the show from its inception in 2004, and Mel B. It was presented by the late Caroline Flack and Olly Murs, who had both previously co-presented spin-off show The Xtra Factor on ITV2 and replaced Dermot O'Leary, who left after eight series. Rochelle Humes and Melvin Odoom presented The Xtra Factor, replacing Sarah-Jane Crawford. Louisa Johnson was announced as the winner on 13 December 2015, making Ora the winning mentor.
Christopher Livingstone Eubank Jr. is a British professional boxer. He has held the WBA interim middleweight title since 2019 and previously held the same title in 2015. He also held the IBO super-middleweight title twice between 2017 and 2019, and at regional level the British middleweight title in 2016. As of May 2020, he is ranked as the world's fourth best active middleweight by BoxRec and eighth by The Ring magazine. He is the son of former two-weight world boxing champion Chris Eubank.
Daniel Ken Holtzclaw is a former Oklahoma City Police Department patrol officer who was convicted in December 2015 of multiple counts of rape, sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy, and other sexual charges.
This is a list of events held and scheduled by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), a mixed martial arts promotion based in the United States. UFC's first event, UFC 1, took place on November 12, 1993. Each UFC event contains several fights. Traditionally, every event starts off with a preliminary card followed by a main card, with the last fight being known as the main event.
Kirk Douglas was an American actor, producer, director, philanthropist, and writer. After an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war films. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films. Douglas was known for his explosive acting style, which he displayed as a criminal defense attorney in Town Without Pity (1961).
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, officially known as the Islamic State (IS) and also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a militant Islamist group and a former unrecognized proto-state that follows a fundamentalist, Salafi jihadist doctrine of Sunni Islam. ISIL was founded in 1999 by Jordanian Salafi jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi under the name Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad and gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive, followed by its capture of Mosul and the Sinjar massacre.
Creed is a 2015 American sports drama film directed by Ryan Coogler from a story by Coogler and a screenplay written by Coogler, Aaron Covington, and Sylvester Stallone who uncreditedly wrote all the scenes and dialogues with his character in the film. Both a sequel and spin-off to the Rocky film series, serving as the seventh installment of the series and a sequel to 2006's Rocky Balboa, Michael B. Jordan stars as Adonis "Donnie" Johnson Creed, Apollo Creed's son, with Sylvester Stallone reprising the role of Rocky Balboa. It also features Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Tony Bellew, and Graham McTavish. The film reunites Jordan with 2013's Fruitvale Station writer-director Coogler, as well as Wood Harris, with whom Jordan had worked on the television series The Wire.
"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is an English Christmas carol that enumerates in the manner of a cumulative song a series of increasingly numerous gifts given on each of the twelve days of Christmas. The song, published in England in 1780 without music as a chant or rhyme, is thought to be French in origin. "The Twelve Days of Christmas" has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 68. The tunes of collected versions vary. The standard tune now associated with it is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederic Austin, who introduced the familiar prolongation of the verse "five gold rings".
Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada is a Guatemalan-American actor who starred in the tragicomedy Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination, the crime drama A Most Violent Year (2014), and the science fiction thriller Ex Machina (2014). In 2006, he portrayed Saint Joseph, husband of Mary, in The Nativity Story. He also portrayed José Ramos-Horta, former president of East Timor and co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, in the Australian film Balibo, for which he won the AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
One-Punch Man is a Japanese superhero franchise created by the artist ONE. It tells the story of Saitama, a superhero who can defeat any opponent with a single punch but seeks to find a worthy opponent after growing bored by a lack of challenge due to his overwhelming strength. ONE wrote the original webcomic version in early 2009.
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin is an American actor, musician, and podcaster. Regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars" and on E!'s list of the "50 Greatest Child Stars".
Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California, and a flagship service of the namesake company Facebook, Inc. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.
Krampus is a 2015 American Christmas comedy horror film based on the eponymous character from Austro-Bavarian folklore, written and directed by Michael Dougherty, and co-written by Todd Casey and Zach Shields. The film stars Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell, Emjay Anthony, Stefania LaVie Owen, and Krista Stadler. In the film, a dysfunctional family squabbling causes a young boy to lose his festive spirit. Doing so unleashes the wrath of Krampus, a fearsome, horned demonic beast in ancient European folklore who punishes naughty children at Christmastime. As Krampus lays siege to the neighborhood, the family must band together to save one another from a monstrous fate.
Spectre is a 2015 spy film and the twenty-fourth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia Pictures. It is the fourth film to feature Daniel Craig as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, and the second film in the series directed by Sam Mendes following Skyfall. It was written by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Jez Butterworth. It is the final James Bond film to be distributed theatrically by Sony Pictures Releasing through its Columbia Pictures label, as Universal Pictures will internationally distribute the next film in the series, No Time to Die.
The Man in the High Castle is an American dystopian alternate history television series created for streaming service Prime Video, depicting a parallel universe where the Axis powers of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan rule the world after their victory in World War II. It was created by Frank Spotnitz and is produced by Amazon Studios, Scott Free Productions, Headline Pictures, Electric Shepherd Productions, and Big Light Productions. The series is based on Philip K. Dick's 1962 novel of the same name.
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist who was the founder and sole leader of the Medellín Cartel. Dubbed "The King of Cocaine," Escobar is the wealthiest criminal in history, having amassed an estimated net worth of US$30 billion by the time of his death—equivalent to $59 billion as of 2019—while his drug cartel monopolized the cocaine trade into the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Phillip Nickolas Katsabanis, better known by his stage name Stitches, is an American rapper. He is known for the song "Brick in Yo Face". Prior to adopting the name Stitches, he was known as Lil Phill. He released his first mixtape, No Snitching Is My Statement, in 2014, followed by a debut album in 2015, titled For Drug Dealers Only.
The Far Eastern Party was a sledging component of the 1911–1914 Australasian Antarctic expedition, which investigated the previously unexplored coastal regions of Antarctica west of Cape Adare. Led by Douglas Mawson, the party aimed to explore the area far to the east of their main base in Adélie Land, pushing about 500 miles (800 km) towards Victoria Land. Accompanying Mawson were Belgrave Edward Ninnis, a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers, and Swiss ski expert Xavier Mertz; the party used sledge dogs to increase their speed across the ice. Initially they made good progress, crossing two huge glaciers on their route south-east.
Manizeh Karimi, known professionally as Mandana Karimi is an Iranian actress and model based in India. After working on several successful modelling projects around the world, she appeared as a lead in the Bollywood film, Bhaag Johnny. She participated in the popular reality TV show, Bigg Boss 9 and became the 2nd runner up in 2015.
Georgia May Foote is an English actress and model. She is best known for playing Alison Simmons in the BBC school drama series Grange Hill from 2005 to 2008 and Katy Armstrong in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street from 2010 to 2015. In 2015 she was runner-up on the BBC celebrity talent show Strictly Come Dancing. She came 98th in FHM's Sexiest Women of 2015.
Hanukkah is a Jewish festival commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE. It is also known as the Festival of Lights.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States, or America, is a country primarily located in North America, consisting of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, it is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area. With a population of more than 328 million people, it is the third most populous country in the world. The national capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City.
Sia Kate Isobelle Furler is an Australian singer, songwriter, voice actress and director. She started her career as a singer in the acid jazz band Crisp in the mid-1990s in Adelaide. In 1997, when Crisp disbanded, she released her debut studio album, titled OnlySee, in Australia. She moved to London, England, and provided vocals for the British duo Zero 7. Sia released her second studio album, Healing Is Difficult, in 2000, and her third studio album, Colour the Small One, in 2004.
Joy Mangano is an American inventor and entrepreneur known for inventions such as the self-wringing Miracle Mop. She was the president of Ingenious Designs, LLC, and appeared regularly on the US television shopping channel HSN until her departure in late 2018.
The Hunger Games is a series of young adult dystopian novels written by the American author Suzanne Collins. The series is set in the Hunger Games universe, the first three novels being a trilogy following teenage protagonist, Katniss Everdeen.
Lisa Olivia Munn is an American actress and former television host. Born in Oklahoma City, she spent her formative years in Utah and later Tokyo, where her stepfather was stationed in the United States Air Force. She returned to Oklahoma as a teenager, and subsequently earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism at the University of Oklahoma, intending to become a broadcast journalist. After interning at a news station in Tulsa, Munn relocated to Los Angeles, where she began her professional career as a television host for the gaming network G4, primarily on the series Attack of the Show! from 2006 until 2010. She was also a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart from 2010 to 2011.
Jelena Noura Hadid, known professionally as Gigi Hadid, is an American model. In November 2014, Hadid made her debut in the Top 50 Models ranking at Models.com. In 2016, she was named International Model of the Year by the British Fashion Council. Over the span of four years, Hadid has made 35 appearances on international Vogue magazine covers.
Willie Junior Maxwell II, better known by his stage name Fetty Wap, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. He rose to prominence after his debut single "Trap Queen" reached number two on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in May 2015. This helped Maxwell secure a record deal with 300 Entertainment, and eventually Atlantic Records. He subsequently released two Top 10 singles in the U.S., "679" and "My Way". Both were featured on Fetty Wap's eponymously titled debut album, released in September 2015 and peaking atop the U.S. Billboard 200 chart.
Carrie Frances Fisher was an American actress and writer. Fisher played Princess Leia in the Star Wars films, a role for which she was nominated for four Saturn Awards. Her other film credits include Shampoo (1975), The Blues Brothers (1980), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The 'Burbs (1989), When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Soapdish (1991), and The Women (2008). Fisher was nominated twice for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her performances on the television series 30 Rock and Catastrophe. She was posthumously made a Disney Legend in 2017, and in 2018 she was awarded a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
The Amazing Race 27 is the twenty-seventh installment of the American reality television show The Amazing Race. It featured eleven teams of two, with each team centered on a pre-existing relationship between the cast members such as marriage, dating, or best friends. Teams competed in a race around the world for a US$1 million grand prize.
Mark Richard Hamill is an American actor, voice actor, and writer. He is known for playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars film series, winning three Saturn Awards for the role. His other film appearances include Corvette Summer (1978) and The Big Red One (1980). Hamill has also appeared on stage in several theater productions, primarily during the 1980s.
Leona Louise Lewis is a British singer, songwriter, actress, model, and activist. She was born and raised in the London Borough of Islington, where she attended the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology. Lewis achieved national recognition when she won the third series of The X Factor in 2006, winning a £1 million recording contract with Syco Music. Her winner's single, a cover of Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This", peaked at number one for four weeks on the UK Singles Chart and broke a world record for reaching 50,000 digital downloads within 30 minutes. In February 2007, Lewis signed a five-album contract in the United States with Clive Davis's record label, J Records.
Christopher Livingstone Eubank is a British former professional boxer who competed from 1985 to 1998. He held the WBO middleweight and super-middleweight titles between 1990 and 1995, and is ranked by BoxRec as the third best British super-middleweight boxer of all time.
Scream Queens is an American satirical comedy slasher television series that aired on Fox from September 22, 2015, to December 20, 2016. The series was created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan and produced by Murphy, Falchuk, Brennan, and Alexis Martin Woodall, and by 20th Century Fox Television, Ryan Murphy Productions, Brad Falchuk Teley-vision, and Prospect Films. The first season takes place at the fictional Wallace University, and was filmed in New Orleans, Louisiana. It follows a sorority, Kappa Kappa Tau (KKT), which becomes plagued by a serial killer, who uses the university's Red Devil mascot as a disguise.
Press Your Luck is an American television game show created by Bill Carruthers and Jan McCormack. It premiered on CBS daytime on September 19, 1983, and ended on September 26, 1986. The format is a retooling of an earlier Carruthers production, Second Chance, hosted by Jim Peck and which aired on ABC in 1977.
Harrison Ford is an American actor, pilot, and environmental activist. As of 2019, the U.S. domestic box office grosses of his films total over $5.1 billion, with worldwide grosses surpassing $9.3 billion, placing him at No. 4 on the list of highest-grossing domestic box office stars of all time. In addition to his box office success, he is also an Academy Award nominee, a four-time Golden Globe nominee, a three-time Saturn Award winner, and the recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Cecil B. DeMille Award.
2015 in film is an overview of events, including the highest-grossing films, award ceremonies, festivals, and a list of films released and notable deaths.
The Big Short is a 2015 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Adam McKay. Written by McKay and Charles Randolph, it is based on the 2010 book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis showing how the financial crisis of 2007–2008 was triggered by the United States housing bubble. The film stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt, with Melissa Leo, Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Finn Wittrock, and Marisa Tomei in supporting roles.
Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Five technology companies in the U.S. information technology industry, alongside Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft.
Craig Ashley David is a British singer, songwriter, rapper, DJ and record producer who rose to fame in 1999, featuring on the single "Re-Rewind" by Artful Dodger. David's debut studio album, Born to Do It, was released in 2000, after which he has released a further five studio albums and worked with a variety of artists such as Sting, Tinchy Stryder, Big Narstie, Kano and Jay Sean. David has 20 UK Top 40 singles, and seven UK Top 40 albums, selling over 15,000,000 records worldwide as a solo artist.
Francis Wayne Sinatra, professionally known as Frank Sinatra Jr., was an American singer, songwriter, and conductor.
Fargo is an American black comedy crime drama television series created and primarily written by Noah Hawley. The show is inspired by the 1996 film, which was written and directed by the Coen brothers. The Coens were impressed by Hawley's script and agreed to be named as executive producers. The series premiered on April 15, 2014, on FX, and follows an anthology format, with each season set in a different era and location, with a different story and mostly new characters and cast, although there is minor overlap. Each season is heavily influenced by various Coen brothers films, with each containing numerous references to them.
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
Arrow is an American superhero television series developed by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow, a costumed crime-fighter created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp, and is set in the Arrowverse, sharing continuity with other Arrowverse television series. The series premiered in the United States on The CW on October 10, 2012, with international broadcasting taking place in late 2012 and primarily filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Arrow follows billionaire playboy Oliver Queen, who claimed to have spent five years shipwrecked on Lian Yu, a mysterious island in the North China Sea, before returning home to Starling City to fight crime and corruption as a secret vigilante whose weapon of choice is a bow and arrow.
YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service, created in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—was bought by Google in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion and now operates as one of the company's subsidiaries. YouTube is the second most-visited website in the world after Google Search, according to Alexa Internet rankings.
Justin Drew Bieber is a Canadian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Discovered at age 13 by talent manager Scooter Braun after he had watched Bieber's YouTube cover song videos, Bieber was signed to RBMG Records in 2008. With Bieber's debut EP My World, released in late 2009, Bieber became the first artist to have seven songs from a debut record chart on the Billboard Hot 100.
Harry Nicholas Arter is a professional footballer who plays as a central or defensive midfielder for Championship club Nottingham Forest.
Rita Sahatçiu Ora is a British singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to prominence in February 2012 when she featured on DJ Fresh's single "Hot Right Now", which reached number one in the UK. Her debut studio album, Ora, released in August 2012, debuted at number one in the United Kingdom. The album contained the UK number-one singles, "R.I.P." and "How We Do (Party)". Ora was the artist with the most number-one singles on the UK Singles Chart in 2012, with three singles reaching the top position.
The Gambia, officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland Africa, and is surrounded by Senegal, except for its western coast on the Atlantic Ocean. The Gambia is situated on both sides of the lower reaches of the Gambia River, the nation's namesake, which flows through the centre of The Gambia and empties into the Atlantic Ocean. It has an area of 10,689 square kilometres (4,127 sq mi) with a population of 1,857,181 as of the April 2013 census. Banjul is the Gambian capital and the country's largest metropolitan area. The largest cities are Serekunda and Brikama.
Jennifer Shrader Lawrence is an American actress. The films she has acted in have grossed over $6 billion worldwide, and she was the world's highest-paid actress in 2015 and 2016. Lawrence appeared in Time's 100 most influential people in the world list in 2013 and in the Forbes Celebrity 100 list in 2014 and 2016.
According to traditional festive legend in some parts of the world, Santa Claus's reindeer are said to pull a sleigh through the night sky to help Santa Claus deliver gifts to children on Christmas Eve. The commonly cited names of the nine reindeer are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, and Rudolph, although Donner is sometimes called Donder and Blitzen is sometimes called Blixem.
Shivaji Rao Gaekwad, known professionally as Rajinikanth, is an Indian actor who works primarily in Tamil cinema. In addition to acting, he has also worked as a producer and screenwriter. He has won many awards, including four Tamil Nadu State Film Best Actor Awards and a Filmfare Best Tamil Actor Award. The Government of India has honored him with the Padma Bhushan (2000) and the Padma Vibhushan (2016). He received the Chevalier Sivaji Ganesan Award for Excellence in Indian Cinema at the 4th Vijay Awards. At the 45th International Film Festival of India (2014), he was conferred with the "Centenary Award for Indian Film Personality of the Year". At the 50th edition of the International Film Festival of India (2019), he was honoured with the Icon of Global Jubilee award. He is the second-highest grossing actor in Tamil cinema history, behind veteran M. G. Ramachandran.
The Flash is an American action television series developed by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, and Geoff Johns, airing on The CW. It is based on the DC Comics character Barry Allen / Flash, a costumed crimefighter with the power to move at superhuman speeds. It is a spin-off from Arrow, existing in the same fictional universe. The series follows Barry Allen, portrayed by Grant Gustin, a crime scene forensic investigator who gains superhuman speed, which he uses to fight criminals, including others who have also gained superhuman abilities.
Gary "Spike" O'Sullivan is an Irish professional boxer. Between 2009 and 2017, he held multiple middleweight championships at regional level including Irish, WBA and WBO titles. All three losses of his career came against future and former world champions.
The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. Published and set in 1962, the novel takes place fifteen years after a different end to World War II, and depicts intrigues between the victorious Axis Powers—primarily, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany—as they rule over the Southern and Western United States.
Adam Richard Sandler is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1995, before going on to star in many Hollywood films, which have combined to earn more than $2 billion at the box office.
Ronda Jean Rousey is an American professional wrestler, actress and former professional mixed martial artist and judoka. She is currently signed to WWE as a wrestler. Her longstanding nickname, "Rowdy", was inherited from late professional wrestler Roddy Piper.
Anthony Armand Ferguson Padilla is an American professional mixed martial artist. He currently competes in the Lightweight division for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). He is a former Interim UFC Lightweight Champion. Ferguson has been competing professionally since 2008, and has been with the UFC since he won The Ultimate Fighter 13. In addition to his wrestling background, Ferguson has also trained boxing, jiu-jitsu, muay thai, and wing chun. As of December 24, 2020, he is #5 in the UFC men's lightweight rankings.