User:HiDrNick/TFA blurbs

Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari

Nil Battey Sannata (Hindi slang for 'Good for Nothing') is a 2015 Indian comedy-drama film directed by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari (pictured) in her feature debut. Produced by Aanand L. Rai, Ajay Rai, and Alan McAlex, the film was co-written by Iyer, Neeraj Singh, Pranjal Choudhary, and Nitesh Tiwari. Swara Bhaskar starred as Chanda Sahay, a high-school drop-out household maid and the single mother of a sullen young girl named Apeksha, played by Ria Shukla. The film's theme is a person's right to change their life, irrespective of social status. The film garnered critical acclaim for its realistic narrative and its cast, especially Bhaskar. In 2017 Iyer won the Filmfare Award for Best Debut Director; Screen Awards went to Bhaskar for Best Actress (Critics) and to Shukla for Best Child Artist. The film totalled around ₹69 million (US$830,000) at the box office. It was remade in Tamil as Amma Kanakku and in Malayalam as Udaharanam Sujatha. (Full article...)

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Dionysus Cup, possibly referencing the seventh Homeric Hymn

The Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram. They praise deities of the Greek pantheon and retell mythological stories, such as the abduction of Persephone and the seduction of Anchises by Aphrodite. In antiquity, the hymns were generally attributed to the poet Homer: modern scholarship has established that they vary widely in date. Performances of the hymns may have taken place at sympotic banquets, religious festivals and royal courts. They may originally have been performed by singers accompanying themselves on a lyre. The hymns influenced Alexandrian and Roman poets, and both pagan and early Christian literature. They were first published in print by Demetrios Chalkokondyles in 1488–1489, while George Chapman made the first English translation of them in 1624. They have since influenced, among others, Handel, Goethe, Shelley, Tennyson and Cavafy. Their influence has also been traced in the novels of James Joyce and Neil Gaiman, and in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. (Full article...)

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Charles Edward (1884–1954) was at various times a British prince, the last ruling duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in Germany, and a Nazi politician. Brought up in the United Kingdom, he was selected to succeed to the throne of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1899 because he was deemed young enough to be re-educated as a German. He married Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein and the couple had five children. Charles Edward was a conservative ruler with an interest in art and technology. During the First World War, he supported the German Empire but was deposed during the German Revolution. During the 1920s, Charles Edward became a moral and financial supporter of violent far-right paramilitary groups, joining the Nazi Party in 1933. He was given multiple positions, including leader of the German Red Cross, and acted as an unofficial diplomat. After the war, he was interned for a period and given a minor conviction by a denazification court, dying of cancer in 1954. (Full article...)

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Title page

Free and Candid Disquisitions is an anonymously published 1749 pamphlet written and compiled by John Jones, a Welsh clergyman of the Church of England. The work promoted a series of reforms to the church and the Book of Common Prayer that Jones hoped would allow the more Protestant and independent Dissenters to be reintegrated into the church. Jones's proposals included shortening the Sunday liturgies, removing Catholic ritual influences, and providing improved hymns and psalms. Several responding texts were written, both lauding and criticizing Jones's work. While the proposals were not accepted by the Church of England, Jones's suggested alterations to the prayer book and advocacy of privately published liturgies influenced several Dissenter liturgical texts and early editions of the American Episcopal Church's prayer book. The pamphlet remained a major influence on proposed liturgical changes in the Church of England until the 19th-century Tractarian movement. (Full article...)

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Aston Martin Rapide S

The Aston Martin Rapide is an executive sports saloon car that was produced by the British carmaker Aston Martin between 2010 and 2020. Development of the car commenced in 2005, and after about two months, a concept car, called the Rapide, was completed and displayed at the North American International Auto Show in 2006. In 2009, three years after the concept's unveiling, the production version debuted at the International Motor Show Germany. Official manufacture of the car began on 7 May 2010, at Magna Steyr's facility in Graz, Austria, but production was shifted to Gaydon, Warwickshire, in 2012 after Aston Martin received funding from the British government. Over its production run, the Rapide received two major updates, with the introduction of the Rapide S (pictured) in 2013 and the Rapide AMR in 2018. A battery electric version of the Rapide, called the Rapide E, was introduced in 2018 but Aston Martin announced in 2020 that it would not be series produced. (Full article...)

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1295 depiction of Alice arriving at Acre

Alice of Champagne (c. 1193 – 1246) was the eldest daughter of Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem and Count Henry II of Champagne. In 1210, Alice married her stepbrother King Hugh I of Cyprus, receiving the County of Jaffa as dowry. After her husband's death in 1218, she assumed the regency for their infant son, King Henry I. Her attempts to bolster her claim to Champagne and Brie in France failed. Due to a debate with her uncle Philip of Ibelin, she left Cyprus in 1223. In exile, she married Bohemond, the heir apparent to the Principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli, but their marriage was annulled. In 1229, she unsuccessfully laid claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem against the absent Conrad II. In 1240, she married Raoul of Nesle and the High Court of Jerusalem proclaimed them regents for Conrad in 1243, although their power was nominal. Raoul left the kingdom, and Alice, before the end of the year. Alice retained the regency until her death in 1246. (Full article...)

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Existential quantifier, used in logic to express existence

Existence is the state of having being or reality. It is often contrasted with essence, since one can understand the essential features of something without knowing whether it exists. Ontology studies existence and differentiates between singular existence of individual entities and general existence of concepts or universals. Entities present in space and time have concrete existence, in contrast to abstract entities, like numbers and sets. Other distinctions are between possible, contingent, and necessary existence and between physical and mental existence. Some philosophers talk of degrees of existence but the more common view is that an entity either exists or not, with no intermediary states. It is controversial whether existence can be understood as a property of individual objects and, if so, whether there are nonexistent objects. The concept of existence has a long history and played a role in the ancient period in pre-Socratic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist philosophy. (Full article...)

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