Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year, it is preceded by the season of Advent or the Nativity Fast and initiates the season of Christmastide, which historically in the West lasts twelve days and culminates on Twelfth Night; in some traditions, Christmastide includes an octave. Christmas Day is a public holiday in many of the world's nations, is celebrated religiously by a majority of Christians, as well as culturally by many non-Christians, and forms an integral part of the holiday season centered around it.
Google Search, also referred to as Google Web Search or simply Google, is a web search engine developed by Google. It is the most used search engine on the World Wide Web across all platforms, with 92.62% market share as of June 2019, handling more than 5.4 billion searches each day.
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was a British-American actress, businesswoman, and humanitarian. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. In 1999, the American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend.
Chennai, also known as Madras or, is the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal, it is the biggest cultural, economic and educational centre of south India. According to the 2011 Indian census, it is the sixth-most populous city and fourth-most populous urban agglomeration in India. The city together with the adjoining regions constitute the Chennai Metropolitan Area, which is the 36th-largest urban area by population in the world. Chennai is among the most-visited Indian cities by foreign tourists. It was ranked the 43rd-most visited city in the world for the year 2015. The Quality of Living Survey rated Chennai as the safest city in India. Chennai attracts 45 percent of health tourists visiting India, and 30 to 40 percent of domestic health tourists. As such, it is termed "India's health capital". As a growing metropolitan city in a developing country, Chennai confronts substantial pollution, as well as other logistical and socio-economic problems.
Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon is an American actress, producer, and entrepreneur. The recipient of several accolades, including an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award, she is among the highest-paid actresses in the world, as of 2019. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and 2015.
iTunes is a media player, media library, Internet radio broadcaster, and mobile device management application developed by Apple Inc. It was announced on January 9, 2001. It is used to play, download, and organize digital multimedia files, including music and video, on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating systems. Content could be purchased through the iTunes Store, or imported from CDs, with iTunes as the software letting users manage their online and physical purchases.
Paul William Walker IV was an American actor best known for his role as Brian O'Conner in The Fast and the Furious franchise. Walker began his career as a child actor during the 1970s and 1980s, but first gained recognition in the early 1990s after appearing in the television soap opera The Young and the Restless. He soon transitioned into film, and received praise in 1999 for his performances in the teen films She's All That and Varsity Blues, which helped kickstart his career. Walker then gained international fame after starring in The Fast and the Furious.
Carrie Frances Fisher was an American actress, writer, and comedian. Fisher is best known for playing 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). She 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.
PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase. PepsiCo has interests in the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company and Frito-Lay, Inc. PepsiCo has since expanded from its namesake product Pepsi to a broader range of food and beverage brands, the largest of which included an acquisition of Tropicana Products in 1998 and the Quaker Oats Company in 2001, which added the Gatorade brand to its portfolio.
Avatar is a 2009 American epic science fiction film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron and stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver. The film is set in the mid-22nd century when humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, in order to mine the mineral unobtanium, a room-temperature superconductor. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na'vi – a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The film's title refers to a genetically engineered Na'vi body operated from the brain of a remotely located human that is used to interact with the natives of Pandora.
Hrithik Roshan is an Indian actor who appears in Bollywood films. He has portrayed a variety of characters and is known for his dancing skills. One of the highest-paid actors in India, he has won many awards, including six Filmfares, four for Best Actor and one each for Best Debut and Best Actor (Critics). Starting in 2012, he appeared in Forbes India's Celebrity 100 based on his income and popularity.
Bigg Boss is a television reality show broadcast on Colors channel in India. It follows the Big Brother format, which was first developed by Endemol in the Netherlands. Over thirteen years, Bigg Boss has rolled out thirteen seasons and one spin-off version.
Zachary David Alexander Efron is an American actor and singer. He began acting professionally in the early 2000s and rose to prominence in the late 2000s for his leading role as Troy Bolton in the High School Musical franchise (2006–2008). During this time, he also starred in the musical film Hairspray (2007) and the comedy film 17 Again (2009). Efron has since starred in the films New Year's Eve (2011), The Lucky One (2012), The Paperboy (2012), Neighbors (2014), Dirty Grandpa (2016), Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016), Baywatch (2017), The Greatest Showman (2017) and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019).
Black Mirror is a British science fiction anthology television series created by Charlie Brooker. He and Annabel Jones serve as the programme's showrunners. It examines modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies. Episodes are standalone, usually set in an alternative present or the near future, often with a dark and satirical tone, although some are more experimental and lighter.
This is a list of notable deaths, organized by year. New deaths articles are added to their respective month, and then linked here.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, United States, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven years old, and six adult staff members. Before driving to the school, he shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the school, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a 2018 American computer-animated superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character Miles Morales / Spider-Man, produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation in association with Marvel, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. It is the first animated feature film in the Spider-Man franchise, and is set in a shared multiverse called the "Spider-Verse", which has alternate universes. The film was directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman from a screenplay by Phil Lord and Rothman, and a story by Lord. It stars the voices of Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Velez, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicolas Cage, and Liev Schreiber. In the film, Miles Morales joins other Spider-Men from various dimensions who team up to save New York City from Kingpin.
Adherents of Islam constitute the world's second largest religious group. According to a study in 2015, Islam has 1.8 billion adherents, making up about 24.1% of the world population. Most Muslims are either of two denominations: Sunni or Shia. Islam is the dominant religion in Central Asia, Indonesia, Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel and some other parts of Asia. The diverse Asia-Pacific region contains the highest number of Muslims in the world, easily surpassing the Middle East and North Africa.
