when did the samsung galaxy alpha come out

Samsung Galaxy Alpha is an Android smartphone produced by Samsung Electronics. Unveiled on 13 August 2014, the device was released in September 2014. A high-end device, the Galaxy Alpha is Samsung's first smartphone to incorporate a metallic frame, although the remainder of its physical appearance still resembles previous models such as the Galaxy S5. It also incorporates Samsung's new Exynos 5430 system-on-chip, which is the first mobile system-on-chip to use a 20 nanometer manufacturing process.

Samsung Galaxy Alpha

The Galaxy Alpha received mixed reviews; although praised for its higher quality build and design in comparison to earlier products, the device was panned for its modest specifications in comparison to its flagship counterpart, the Galaxy S5, and for being priced too high for what they considered to be a "mid-range" smartphone.

Samsung has historically been criticized for its continued use of low-quality polycarbonate materials on its flagship smartphone products, even as its competitors have made phones utilizing higher quality plastics or unibody aluminium frames.[2][3] Despite these issues with build quality, Samsung has still been considered the most dominant Android OEM.[4] However, in July 2014, the company reported its lowest profits in over two years, and a drop in market share from 32.3% to 25.2% over the past year. The loss in market share was attributed primarily to growing competition from vendors such as HTC and LG, and similarly increased competition in the low and mid-range markets from vendors such as Huawei and Motorola (who is currently in the process of being sold by Google to Lenovo).[4][5]

In early-June 2014, images leaked of an upcoming Samsung phone tentatively known as the "Galaxy F", shown alongside a Galaxy S5: it incorporated a metallic frame, thinner bezels around the screen than the S5, and was to allegedly include a quad HD display,[6] Snapdragon 805 system-on-chip, along with the heart rate sensor and water/dust-proofing from the S5.[6][7] On June 18, 2014, Samsung would unveil an LTE-Advanced version of the S5 with a quad HD display, exclusively for release in South Korea. A Samsung representative stated it had "no plans" to release this device globally.[8]

In late July 2014, further images leaked of the rumored device, now identified as the "Galaxy Alpha"; the device depicted was now a mid-range device positioned below the S5, incorporating a metallic frame, a 720p 4.7 in (119 mm) display similar to the Galaxy S III, and no expandable storage.[9][10] On July 31, 2014, Kim Hyun-joon, senior vice president of Samsung's mobile business, told investors that the company was planning to release a major new device incorporating "new materials" by the end of 2014. Critics interpreted his statement as signs that the company was planning to make a metal smartphone, but that it could also be a new entry in the Galaxy Note series.[11][12]

On August 13, 2014, Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy Alpha. Samsung Electronics CEO JK Shin explained that the Alpha was "built and designed based on the specific desires of the consumer market."[1] The company touted that the Galaxy Alpha would mark a "new design approach" for Samsung's products, and that elements from the Alpha could appear on future Samsung models.[13]

In December 2014, it was reported that, only three months after its release, Samsung planned to end production of the Alpha in favor of its successor, the similarly-designed, but more competitively-priced fully metal Galaxy A5 along with Galaxy A3 and the A7.[14] Samsung's new design philosophy would be fully realized by its 2015 flagship, the Galaxy S6, which combined a unibody metal frame with a glass backing.[15]

The Galaxy Alpha's overall design is an evolution upon that of the Galaxy S5, incorporating a chamferred metal frame and a dimpled, plastic rear cover.[1][13] With a thickness of 6.7 mm (0.26 in)At the time, the Galaxy Alpha was the company's thinnest smartphone.[16]

International models of the Alpha utilize an octa-core, Exynos 5430 system-on-chip; consisting of a bank of four 1.8 GHz Cortex-A15 cores, and four 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7 cores. The Exynos 5430 is the first ever mobile system-on-chip to use a 20 nanometer HKMG manufacturing process.[1][17][18] The international model was the first device to incorporate Intel's XMM7260 modem for category 6 LTE Advanced support.[19] U.S. models include a 2.5 GHz Snapdragon 801 processor instead; both models will include 2 GB of RAM.[19]

The Galaxy Alpha features a PenTile 720p 4.7 in (120 mm) Super AMOLED display, and also incorporates a 12 megapixel rear-facing camera, fingerprint and heart rate sensors, and removable 1860 mAh battery. The device includes 32 GB of non-expandable storage, and runs Android 4.4.4 "KitKat" but can be upgraded to Android 5.0.2 "Lollipop" with Samsung's TouchWiz software suite.[1][19]

While praising Samsung's decision to begin manufacturing a smartphone that incorporates actual metal in its design, critics noted that despite its "premium" appearance, the internal specifications of the Galaxy Alpha were "mid-range" in comparison to the S5, with particular emphasis placed on the device's smaller, lower-resolution screen, the replacement of its USB 3.0 port with a USB 2.0 port, and its smaller battery. However, Ars Technica noted that the lower screen resolution could offset the lower capacity of the device's battery, and ExtremeTech also noted that the smaller battery would make the device lighter, and the lower resolution of the display could improve the responsiveness of Samsung's Android distribution.[1][20] In conclusion, the Alpha was considered by ExtremeTech to be "a hedge against several troubling trends for the worldâ€™s largest smartphone maker", believing that its slimmer build and higher quality design were an attempt to compete against the then-upcoming iPhone 6, which features a 4.7 inch display.[20]

Engadget described the Galaxy Alpha as Samsung's "most beautiful phone yet", praising its design for being "simple, yet elegant; minimal, yet profuse". Its overall performance was considered to be up to par with the Galaxy S5, and its display was described as being "acceptable" for its class. However, the Galaxy Alpha was criticized for being too expensive for its class, concluding that "the only reason you'd want to pick this over the Galaxy S5, which is available for a similar price, is that you prefer a smaller size or more solid build. But even then, this design isn't a one-and-done; you'll be able to get the same fit and finish on the Note 4 and Note Edge (albeit with larger screens)."[21]

Singer Beyoncé filmed the video for her 2014 song 7/11 (song) using its camera.


who is the owner of united spirits limited

On 27 May 2013, Diageo acquired a 10% stake in United Spirits at a cost of ₹20,927,196,000 (US$310 million). It also separately acquired an additional 58,668 shares for ₹ 85,778,082.[11] On 4 July 2013, Diageo bought an additional 14.98% of the company for ₹31.35 billion (US$470 million). Diageo acquired an additional 21.77 million shares at a cost of ₹1,440 (US$21) per share in an off-market-deal from United Spirits' promoters, raising its holdings to 25.02 per cent of the company.[12][13] Following that purchase, Diageo held 36.3 million shares in USL, acquired at a cost of ₹52,358.5 million (US$780 million),[14] making it the largest shareholder.[15] Under pressure from Diageo, some substantial changes to the management structure of the firm began to take place in 2013.[16]

United Spirits

United Spirits Limited, abbreviated to USL, is an Indian alcoholic beverages company, and the world's second-largest spirits company by volume.[2] It is a subsidiary of Diageo, and headquartered at UB Tower in Bangalore, Karnataka. USL exports its products to over 37 countries.[1]

According to the official website of the company, as of March 2013, USL has more than 140 liquor brands, of which 15 brands each sell more than one million cases annually while 3 brands each sell more than 10 million cases annually.[3]

The company originated as a trading company called McDowell and Company (also known as McDowell & Co, McDowell or McDowell's), founded in India in 1826 by Angus McDowell, a Scot.[4] He set up a warehouse near Fort St. George, Madras (now Chennai).[5] The company imported liquor, tobacco products, and other consumer goods into India to serve the needs of British people stationed there.[5] McDowell & Company Limited was incorporated as a company in 1898, with an initial capital of ₹8 lakh (US$12,000) as 4,000 preferred shares and 4,000 common shares of ₹100 (US$1.50) each. The company's principal shareholders were A.M. Hooper, G.D. Coleman, and G.A. Ruppell.[5]

The Vittal Mallya-run United Breweries Group bought McDowell and Company in 1951.[4] In 1959, Mallya established the company's first distillery at Cherthala, Kerala on the banks of the Vembanad lake. McDowell's began bottling Bisquit Brandy and Dorville French Brandy, from imported concentrates, becoming the first company to manufacture Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL). The company opened India's first distillation plant to manufacture extra neutral alcohol (ENA) at Cherthala in 1961. The plant began bottling products for Herbertsons Limited of the Anglo Thai Group that same year. The company launched Golden Grape Brandy, its first original product, in 1962. The company launched McDowell's No.1 Brandy in 1963–64 when their contract with Herbertsons expired. In the early 1960s, the company acquired Carew & Co and Phipson & Co, manufacturers of rum, gin, and other hard liquors. in 1963–64.[5]

The company launched McDowell's No.1 whisky in 1968, and commissioned new distilleries in Hyderabad, Ponda (Goa), and Hathidah (Bihar) over the next few years. In the late 1970s, distilleries were acquired in Udaipur, Alwar, Mirganj, and Serampore, and a plant was built in Pondicherry. The company bought out Herbertsons in 1973. Mallya's son, Vijay Mallya, took over as director of McDowell's the same year, and assumed chairmanship of UB Group and McDowell's after Vittal Mallya died in 1983. McDowell's moved its headquarters from Madras to Bangalore in 1987. The company established a technical centre for product and process development research in Bangalore in 1989. McDowell's No.1 Rum was launched in 1990. McDowell's acquired the spirits business and manufacturing facility of Forbes Campbell & Company Limited. McDowell's formed United Distillers India Limited, India's first joint venture in the alcoholic beverages industry, with United Distillers of the United Kingdom in 1991â€“92. McDowell's Signature whisky was launched in 1994. In 1995, Carew Phipson Limited, Consolidated Distilleries Ltd and several other companies were merged into McDowell's.[5] The company was incorporated as McDowell Sprits Ltd in 1999. The name was changed to McDowell & Company Ltd on 1 April 2000. McDowell Alcobev became a wholly owned subsidiary of McDowell & Company in 2002. In the same year, the company acquired Phipson Distilley, McDowell International Brands Ltd, and most of Triumph Distilleries & Vinters Pvt Ltd. McDowell launched Derby Special Whisky in 2003 and Old Cask rum in 2004.[6]

On 21 March 2005, McDowell & Company entered into an agreement with Jumbo World Holdings Limited (JWHL) in Dubai to acquire Shaw Wallace.[7][8] The board of Shaw Wallace approved the merger of the company with USL and fixed the appointed date of the merger as 1 April 2008 subject to approvals.[9] In 2006, McDowell & Co Limited, Herbertsons Limited, Triumph Distillers and Vintners Private Limited, Baramati Grape Industries India Limited, Shaw Wallace Distilleries Limited and four other companies are merged to form United Spirits Limited. Bouvet Ladubay, subsidiary of France-based Taittinger was acquired, the same year.[5] The UB Group purchased Whyte & Mackay in May 2007 for £595 million.[10] USL also acquired Liquidity Inc., makers of Pinky Vodka, in 2007. USL launched Black Dog 18 YO and Four Seasons Barrique Reserve in 2009–10, and McDowell's No 1 Platinum, 100% grain based whisky, in 2011.[5]

In 2014, Diageo's share holdings rose to 54.8% of USL.[1]

In early 2014, Whyte & Mackay, which had been purchased by UB Group in 2007, was sold to Philippines-based Emperador for Â£430 million.[17]

In 5 November 2017, the Paradise Papers, a set of confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investment, revealed that United Spirits with three other subsidiaries based in the UK were allegedly involved with diverting funds amounting to $1.5 billion.[18]

The USL technical centre was opened in 1989 in Bangalore, and is recognised by the Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (DSIR) as an in-house Research & Development laboratory.[19]

USL manufactures Scotch whisky, Indian whisky, brandy, rum, vodka, gin and wine.[20]

USL owns several distilleries throughout India, and also owns one unit in Nepal. Besides these, USL also has several contract and associate distilleries in India, and one in Nepal.[22]

Contract and associate units


who wrote the best selling book the road ahead

The Road Ahead is a book written by Bill Gates, co-founder and then-CEO of the Microsoft software company, together with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson. Published in November 1995, then substantially revised about a year later, The Road Ahead summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway.

The Road Ahead (Bill Gates book)

Gates received a $2.5 million advance for his book and money from subsidiary rights sales;[2] all his proceeds were donated to "encourage the use of technology in education administered through the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education,"[4] a foundation created by the National Education Association.[5]

The hardback edition saw the Internet as one of the "important precursors of the information highway...suggestive of [its] future" (p. 89);[4] he noted that the "popularity of the Internet is the most important single development in the world of computing since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981"[4] (p. 91) but "today's Internet is not the information highway I imagine, although you can think of it as the beginning of the highway": the information highway he envisioned would be as different from the Internet as the Oregon Trail was to Interstate 84.[4] (p. 95)

After the book was written, but before it hit bookstores, Gates recognized that the Internet was gaining critical mass, and on December 7, 1995 — just weeks after the release of the book — he redirected Microsoft to become an Internet-focused company; in retrospect he had "vastly underestimated how important and how quickly the internet would come to prominence".[3] Then he and coauthor Rinearson spent several months revising the book, making it 20,000 words longer and focused on the Internet.[citation needed] The revised edition was published in October 1996 as a trade paperback,[6] with the subtitle "Completely revised and up-to-date.".[3]

Both editions came with a CD-ROM that contained the text of the book and supplemental information. The hardback was published by Viking, and the paperback by Penguin, an affiliate of Viking. Numerous publishers around the world produced translated versions of the book.

One of Gates' coauthors, Nathan Myhrvold, was a computer scientist and Microsoft vice president who for a time oversaw Microsoft's research efforts and later co-founded Intellectual Ventures, an intellectual property company. The other co-author, Peter Rinearson, was a Pulitzer Prize winner and entrepreneur who later founded and sold an Internet company and became a Microsoft vice president.

The publisher's $1 million promotional budget was one of its largest ever, rivaling that given to My American Journey, an autobiography of Gen. Colin Powell also released at the time.[2] The first excerpts from the book were published on November 19 by The Sunday Times in the United Kingdom (only a few months after Microsoft, in a Windows 95 promotion, "paid for an entire daily press run of The Times and gave it away to readers") and in the November 27th, edition of Newsweek.[2] Accompanying the publicity was a "one-day lay down", a "very expensive marketing technique" where a book is placed on sale in multiple countries on the same day (November 24, in this case), giving the book "an almost sure shot at the No. 1 spot on best-seller lists."[2] The Road Ahead got a first printing of 850,000 books in North America and several hundred thousand overseas.[2]

It was early enough in the history of the World Wide Web that The New York Times thought it newsworthy to report that Gates was going to "conduct on-line forums to promote the book" and Penguin had created a "Bill Gates web site on the Internet (http://www.penguin.com/roadahead), which will feature information and an audio clip about the book, printed excerpts and quotes from reviews, as well as information about the CD-ROM."[2]

Gates publicized the book's release during a five-day tour of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, London and Paris,[2] which included appearances on Nightline, Talking with David Frost, The Today Show, the Late Show with David Letterman, MTV, Fresh Air, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer[2][7]

The Road Ahead occupied the top spot on The New York Times' bestseller list for over seven weeks in late 1995 and early 1996, and sold 2.5 million copies.[citation needed]

A reviewer at The Seattle Times (and coauthor of Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America, a 1993 biography of Gates), called Gates' coverage of the Internet "weakest of all" the topics Gates covered, saying the "World Wide Web receives just four index citations and is treated as a functional appendage of the Internet (rather than its driving force), and both come off as a subset of the Information Highway, a term Gates uses with abandon."[7]

The New York Times review called the book "bland and tepid" and reading "as if it had been vetted by a committee of Microsoft executives"; it is "little more than a positioning document, sold in book form with accompanying CD-ROM and designed mainly to advance the interests of the Microsoft Corporation."[8] It also said that Gates "has been caught flat-footed by [the Internet's] sudden emergence" and saying the book is "part of Mr. Gates's extensive effort to force his way back into the game before it's too late."[8]

Time magazine, in a December 1995 article about Gates in general rather than his book, said:[9]

Gates is as fearful as he is feared, and these days he worries most about the Internet, Usenet and the World Wide Web, which threaten his software monopoly by shifting the nexus of control from stand-alone computers to the network that connects them. The Internet, by design, has no central operating system that Microsoft or anybody else can patent and license. And its libertarian culture is devoted to open—that is to say, nonproprietary—standards, none of which were set by Microsoft. Gates moved quickly this year to embrace the Net, although it sometimes seemed he was trying to wrap Microsoft's long arms around it.


who plays melinda's husband on ghost whisperer

In 2005, Conrad appeared in the comedy Wedding Crashers with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, as well as landing a regular role on the CBS series Ghost Whisperer, in which he portrayed Jennifer Love Hewittâ€™s paramedic husband, Jim Clancy until the series was canceled in 2010. In 2010 he was seen on an Episode of CSI: Miami. In 2013 he began playing the recurring role of Ian Quinn in the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

David Conrad

David Conrad (born August 17, 1967) is an American actor. From 2005 to 2010, he starred in the television series Ghost Whisperer alongside Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Conrad, the youngest of three boys, is the son of James Watson Conrad, an engineer, and Margaret Clement Conrad, a librarian. He is the great-grandson of electrical engineer Frank Conrad, great-nephew of Martin Withington Clement, who was president of the Pennsylvania Railroad 1935-1948, and great-nephew of Maj.General Charles M. Clement, commander of the 28th Division.  He is a native of Swissvale, Pennsylvania, and grew up on the border of Edgewood, both suburbs of Pittsburgh. In the early 1980s, he transferred as a sophomore from Swissvale High School to The Kiski School, an all-boys preparatory school in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, on a scholarship.[1] Conrad  graduated from The Kiski School in 1985.[2] He studied history at Brown University, and began acting while he was there. He left Brown in 1990 and worked as a carpenter, a barista, a housepainter, and interviewed former steelworkers for a historical society in Pittsburgh.

He then went on to study theatre at New York’s prestigious Juilliard School[3] as a member of the Drama Division's Group 25 (1992–1996).[4] While at Juilliard, Conrad appeared in a stage adaptation of John Irving's novel The Cider House Rules, written by Peter Parnell and co-directed by actor Tom Hulce.[citation needed] In 1995 he left Juilliard prior to completing his final year, in order to accept a role in the film Snow White in the Black Forest starring Sigourney Weaver[5] (released in 1997 on Showtime as Snow White: A Tale of Terror).

Conrad made his feature film debut with a small role in the 1994 film Under Heat. In 1996, he won a role as Leo Roth on the television series Relativity; however, he was already committed to a Pittsburgh production of the Tom Stoppard play Arcadia. Because the producers felt Conrad was right for the part, production on the series was later scheduled to accommodate his work on the play.[citation needed] Conrad went on to appear in the 1998 film Return to Paradise with Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche.

Continuing with his stage career, Conrad made his Broadway debut as Blythe Danner's much younger lover in a revival of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea in 1998. He went on to appear in off-Broadway productions of Troilus and Cressida, Richard II and Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink. Most recently, in June 2009, he performed as Pale in the play Burn This at the New Hazlett Theater in Pittsburgh.
In 1999, Conrad appeared in the TV drama The Weekend with Gena Rowlands and Brooke Shields. That same year he appeared in the Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie A Season for Miracles, opposite Carla Gugino.

He portrayed a naval lieutenant alongside Robert De Niro and Cuba Gooding, Jr. in Men of Honor (2000) and also appeared in recurring roles on the WB series Roswell (1999–2002) and Fox’s dramatic series Boston Public (2000–2005).
In 2003, Conrad appeared in a small role in the Woody Allen comedy Anything Else and was cast as Detective Ed Exley in the network adaptation of "L.A. Confidential"; though the pilot was not picked up to series, Conrad soon found work on NBC’s Miss Match, in which he tries to win the heart of professional matchmaker Kate Fox (Alicia Silverstone). The series was pulled after airing 11 of 18 episodes.

Conrad has been a visiting professor of Literature and Drama at the University of Pittsburgh.[citation needed]


where is the tv show the detectorists filmed

Although the series is set in Essex, it was mainly filmed in Suffolk, with Framlingham used as a major location.[31][32][33][34] Other locations used in filming include Orford, where Orford Primary School was used as the outside of Becky's school, Great Glemham, where interior pub scenes were filmed, and Ipswich. In series 2, the round-tower church at Aldham was used as a recurring location.[35]
One location in Essex was used in Detectorists: the scenes involving Lance's girlfriend Toni's houseboat, 'Elsie', were filmed at Paper Mill Lock, Little Baddow. Locations were sourced by Creative England.[36]

Detectorists

Detectorists is a British single-camera television comedy series which was first broadcast on BBC Four on 2 October 2014. It is written and directed by Mackenzie Crook, who also stars alongside Toby Jones.[1][2]

The series is set in the fictional small town of Danebury in northern Essex and the plot revolves around the lives, loves and detecting ambitions of Andy and Lance, members of the Danebury Metal Detecting Club (DMDC).

It won a BAFTA award at the 2015 British Academy Television Awards for Television Scripted Comedy.[3]

Series 2 commences with a 3-minute sequence showing an Anglo Saxon priest, carrying a holy book and an aestel (a pointer stick similar to that associated with the Alfred Jewel) in a sack, fleeing mounted spearmen. He buries the sack near a standing stone. Time lapse shows all but the decorated gold handle of the stick decaying, and the shot pans upwards to reveal Andy and Lance walking across the field in present-day Danebury, detecting as they go. Having had no success they decide to look up the hill. The jewel is shown again, still buried, at the beginning of subsequent episodes.

In March 2017, the BBC released a statement confirming the filming of a third and final series.[19] The six-episode third series was filmed in the summer of 2017 and aired weekly on BBC Four from 8 November 2017.[20][21]

The first episode ends with a historical timeline sequence, backed by the song "Magpie" by The Unthanks.[22] Reviewing the opening episode for The Guardian, Sam Wollaston said: "Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones shine in the third and final series of this beautifully written and performed slice of life."[23]

Detectorists was announced by the BBC on 31 January 2014. The producer was Adam Tandy and the series was a Channel X and Lola Entertainment co-production.[29][30]

Diana Rigg, who plays Veronica, and Rachael Stirling, who plays her daughter Becky, are mother and daughter in real life.[37]

Upon deciding to finish the show at the end of series 3, Crook commented "it took a while to realise that I did want to do six more episodes to finish. I don’t want to make any sort of big, dramatic announcement that ‘never again’, but I can’t see myself going back to it." [38]

Internationally, the series premiered in Australia on 9 November 2015 on BBC First.[39] In the United States, the series premiered on streaming subscription service Acorn TV in August 2015.[40]

Series one of Detectorists was met with positive reviews from a number of UK and US media outlets. David Renshaw, writing for The Guardian, had particular praise for the "delightful double-act" Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones. Renshaw points to the "biggest ratings BBC4 has ever had for a comedy" as evidence that "Detectorists has clearly struck the sort of gold that Lance and Andy spend hours sweeping the fields for".[41] Rupert Hawksley, writing for The Daily Telegraph, was particularly impressed with Crook's "first-rate writing" and remarked in his review that series one "has all the markings of a classic sitcom".[42]

Ellen E. Jones of The Independent said that while the show "requires some patience... it has turned out to be one of the best new sitcoms of the year".[43]

In the US media, The New York Times writer Mike Hale describes Detectorists as a "distinctive creation â€“ not for everyone, but bound to be fiercely loved by those who fall into its rhythms".[44] Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times "can't recommend it enough", saying: "Like the ordinary lives it magnifies, Detectorists has the air of seeming to be small and immense at once, to be about hardly anything and almost everything. It is full of space and packed with life."[40]

When the programme returned for a second series, the response was also positive.[37][45]

On the completion of the third and final series Radio Times website reviewer Mark Braxton wrote "The series finale... is one of the most satisfying conclusions ever. Series one and two both ended in clever and memorable ways: bittersweet and punch-the-air respectively. But the series three finale has a real poetry to it; Crook seems to be saying: “Yes, that’s where we’ll leave it – I’m happy with that.”[46]


where did the first america's cup take place

The cup was originally awarded in 1851 by the Royal Yacht Squadron for a race around the Isle of Wight in England, which was won by the schooner America. The trophy, originally named the 'Â£100 Cup', was renamed the America's Cup after the yacht and was donated to the New York Yacht Club (NYYC) under the terms of the Deed of Gift, which made the cup available for perpetual international competition.

America's Cup

The America's Cup, affectionately known as the "Auld Mug", is a trophy awarded to the winner of the America's Cup match races between two sailing yachts. One yacht, known as the defender, represents the yacht club that currently holds the America's Cup and the second yacht, known as the challenger, represents the yacht club that is challenging for the cup. The timing of each match is determined by an agreement between the defender and the challenger. The America's Cup is the oldest international sporting trophy.[1][2][3] It will next be raced for in the southern summer, in the early part of 2021.[4]

Any yacht club that meets the requirements specified in the deed of gift has the right to challenge the yacht club that holds the cup. If the challenging club wins the match, it gains stewardship of the cup.

The history and prestige associated with the America's Cup attracts not only the world's top sailors and yacht designers but also the involvement of wealthy entrepreneurs and sponsors. It is a test not only of sailing skill and boat and sail design, but also of fundraising and management skills.

The trophy was held by the NYYC from 1857 (when the syndicate that won the cup donated the trophy to the club) until 1983. The NYYC successfully defended the trophy twenty-four times in a row before being defeated by the Royal Perth Yacht Club, represented by the yacht Australia II. The NYYC's reign was the longest winning streak (in terms of date) in the history of all sports.[5]

From the first defense of the cup in 1870 through the twentieth defense in 1967, there was always only one challenger. In 1970, for the first time, there were multiple challengers, so the NYYC agreed that the challengers could run a selection series with the winner becoming the official challenger and competing against the defender in the America's Cup match. Since 1983, Louis Vuitton has sponsored the Louis Vuitton Cup as a prize for the winner of the challenger selection series.

Early matches for the cup were raced between yachts 65–90 ft (20–27 m) on the waterline owned by wealthy sportsmen. This culminated with the J-Class regattas of the 1930s. After World War II and almost twenty years without a challenge, the NYYC made changes to the deed of gift to allow smaller, less expensive 12-metre class yachts to compete; this class was used from 1958 until 1987. It was replaced in 1990 by the International America’s Cup Class which was used until 2007.

After a long legal battle, the 2010 America's Cup was raced in 90 ft (27 m) lwl multihull yachts in a best of three "deed of gift" match in Valencia, Spain. The victorious Golden Gate Yacht Club then elected to race the 2013 America's Cup in AC72 foiling, wing-sail catamarans. Golden Gate Yacht Club successfully defended the cup. The 35th America's Cup match was announced to be sailed in 50 ft foiling catamarans.[6]

The history of the America's Cup has included legal battles and disputes over rule changes including most recently over the rule changes for the 2017 America's Cup.[7]

The America's Cup is currently held by the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron,[8] who will defend the Cup in the 36th time.

The Cup is an ornate sterling silver bottomless ewer crafted in 1848 by Garrard & Co.[9] Henry William Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey bought one and donated it for the Royal Yacht Squadron's 1851 Annual Regatta around the Isle of Wight.

It was originally known as the "R.Y.S. £100 Cup", standing for a cup of a hundred GB Pounds or "sovereigns" in value. The cup was subsequently mistakenly engraved[10] as the "100 Guinea Cup" by the America syndicate, but was also referred to as the "Queen's Cup" (a guinea is an old monetary unit of one pound and one shilling, now £1.05). Today, the trophy is officially known as the "America's Cup" after the 1851 winning yacht, and is affectionately called the "Auld Mug" by the sailing community. It is inscribed with names of the yachts that competed for it,[10] and has been modified twice by adding matching bases to accommodate more names.

In 1851 Commodore John Cox Stevens, a charter member of the fledgling New York Yacht Club (NYYC), formed a six-person syndicate to build a yacht with intention of taking her to England and making some money competing in yachting regattas and match races. The syndicate contracted with pilot boat designer George Steers for a 101 ft (30.78 m) schooner, which was christened America and launched on 3 May 1851.

On 22 August 1851, America raced against 15 yachts of the Royal Yacht Squadron in the Club's annual 53-nautical-mile (98Â km) regatta around the Isle of Wight. America won, finishing 8 minutes ahead of the closest rival. Apocryphally, Queen Victoria, who was watching at the finish line, was reported to have asked who was second, the famous answer being: "Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second."[11]

The surviving members of the America syndicate donated the cup via the Deed of Gift of the America's Cup to the NYYC on 8 July 1857, specifying that it be held in trust as a perpetual challenge trophy to promote friendly competition among nations.

No challenge to race for the Cup was issued until British railway tycoon James Lloyd Ashbury's topsail schooner Cambria (188 tons, 1868 design) beat the Yankee schooner Sappho (274.4 tons, 1867 design) in the Solent in 1868.[12] This success encouraged the Royal Thames Yacht Club in believing that the cup could be brought back home, and officially placed the first challenge in 1870. Ashbury entered Cambria in the NYYC Queen's Cup race in New York City on 8 August against a fleet of seventeen schooners, with time allowed based on their tonnage. The Cambria only placed eighth, behind the aging America (178.6 tons, 1851) in fourth place and Franklin Osgood's Magic (92.2 tons, 1857)[13] in the fleet's lead.[14]

Trying again, Ashbury offered a best-of-seven match race challenge for October 1871, which the NYYC accepted provided a defending yacht could be chosen on the morning of each race. Ashbury's new yacht Livonia (264 tons) was beaten twice in a row by Osgood's new centreboard schooner Columbia (220 tons), which withdrew in the third race after dismasting. The yacht Sappho then stepped in as defender to win the fourth and fifth races, thereby successfully defending the cup.[15]

The next challenge came from the Royal Canadian Yacht Club and was the first to be disputed between two yachts only. The schooner Madeleine (148.2 tons, 1868), a previous defender from the 1870 fleet race, easily defeated the challenger Countess of Dufferin (221 tons, 1876 design by Alexander Cuthbert). Cuthbert filed the second Canadian challenge, bankrolling, designing and sailing the first sloop challenge for the America's Cup in 1881. The small 65 ft (19.81 m) Canadian challenger Atalanta[16] (84 tons, 1881), representing the Bay of Quinte Yacht Club, suffered from lack of funds, unfinished build and a difficult delivery through the Erie Canal from Lake Ontario to New York. In contrast, the NYYC cautiously prepared its first selection trials. The iron sloop Mischief (79 tons, 1879 design by Archibald Cary Smith) was chosen from four sloop candidates, and successfully defended the cup.

In response to the incompetent Canadian challenges, the Deed of Gift was amended in 1881 to require that challenges be accepted only from yacht clubs on the sea and that challenger yachts must sail to the venue on their own hull. Furthermore, Archibald Cary Smith and the NYYC committee devised a new rating rule that would govern the next races. They included sail area and waterline length into the handicap, with penalties on waterlines longer than 85 ft (25.91 m). Irish yacht designer John Beavor-Webb launched the challengers Genesta (1884) and Galatea (1885), which would define the British "plank-on-edge" design of a heavy, deep and narrow-keel hull, making for very stiff yachts ideal for the British breeze.[17] The boats came to New York in 1885 and 1886 respectively, but neither would best the sloops Puritan or Mayflower, whose success in selection trials against many other candidates proved Boston designer Edward Burgess was the master of the "compromise sloop"[18] (lightweight, wide and shallow hull with centerboard). This design paradigm proved ideal for the light Yankee airs.[19]

In 1887, Edward Burgess repeated his success with the Volunteer against Scottish yacht designer George Lennox Watson's challenger Thistle, which was built in secret. Even when the Thistle was drydocked in New York before the races, her hull was draped to protect the secret of her lines, which borrowed from American design. Both Volunteer and Thistle were completely unfurnished below decks to save weight.[20]

In 1887, the NYYC adopted the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club's rating rule, in which Bristol, RI naval architect Nathanael Herreshoff found loopholes that he would use to make dramatic improvements in yacht design and to shape the America's Cup's largest and most extreme contenders. Both Herreshoff and Watson proceeded to merge Yankee sloop design and British cutter design to make very deep S-shape fin-keeled hulls. Using steel, tobin bronze, aluminium, and even nickel for novel construction, they significantly lengthened bow and stern overhangs, further extending the sailing waterline as their boats heeled over, thus increasing their speed.[citation needed]

The next America's Cup challenge was initially limited to 70 ft (21.34 m) waterline in 1889, but the mutual-agreement clauses of a new 1887 Deed of Gift caused the Royal Yacht Squadron to withdraw the Earl of Dunraven's promising Watson designed challenger Valkyrie while she was crossing the Atlantic. Dunraven challenged again in 1893, pleading for a return to the longer 85 ft (26 m) limit. In a cup-crazed Britain, its four largest cutters ever were being built, including Watson's Valkyrie II for Dunraven's challenge. Meanwhile, the NYYC's wealthiest members ordered two cup candidates from Herreshoff, and two more from Boston yacht designers. Charles Oliver Iselin, who was running the syndicate behind one of the Herreshoff designs called Vigilant, gave the naval architect leave to design the yacht entirely as he willed. Herreshoff helmed Vigilant himself and beat all his rivals in selection trials, and defended the cup successfully from Valkyrie II.[21]

Urged to challenge again in yet larger boat sizes, Dunraven challenged again in 1895 with a 90 ft (27.43 m) waterline limit. The Watson designed challenger Valkyrie III received many innovations: She would be wider than the defender, and featured the first steel mast.[22] The NYYC ordered another defender from Herreshoff, which he had built in a closed off hangar and launched at night so as to conceal her construction: Defender used an aluminium topside riveted to steel frames and manganese bronze below waters. This saved 17 tons of displacement, but later subjected the boat to extreme electrolysis after the Cup races. Valkyrie III lost the first race, was deemed disqualified in the second race following a collision with Defender before the start line despite finishing first, and in turn withdrew from the contest. The unraveling of the races left Dunraven in a bitter disagreement with all parties over fairness of the cup committee concerning claims. After he asserted that he had been cheated, his honorary membership of the NYYC was revoked.[23] Henry "Hank" Coleman Haff, was inducted into America's Cup Hall of Fame in 2004 for his sailing of Defender in 1895 and bringing the cup back. At age 58, Hank Haff was the oldest cup winner in the history of the race.[24]

The climate was estranged until Scottish businessman Sir Thomas Lipton became the financial backer for the Royal Ulster Yacht Club's 1899 challenge. William Fife was chosen to design the challenging yacht because of past success in American waters.[25] The yachts increased yet again in size, and this time Herreshoff fitted a telescopic steel mast to his defender Columbia, but his largest contribution was to recruit Scottish-American skipper Charlie Barr. The latter had helmed Fife designs[26] in Yankee waters before, and he had shown perfect coordination with his hand-picked Scandinavian crew. Barr successfully helmed Columbia to victory, and Lipton's noted fair play provided unprecedented popular appeal to the sport and to his tea brand.

Although upset with the Shamrock, Lipton challenged again in 1901, turning this time to George Lennox Watson for a "cup-lifter": Shamrock II, Watson's fourth and final challenger, was the first cup contender to be thoroughly tank-tested. To defend the Cup, businessman Thomas W. Lawson funded for Boston designer Bowdoin B. Crowninshield a daring project: his yacht Independence was capable of unrivaled performance because of her extremely long sailing waterline, but she was largely overpowered and unbalanced and suffered from structural issues. Furthermore, Lawson's failure to commit to the NYYC's terms for defending the Cup defaulted the Independenceʼs elimination. Herreshoff had again received a commission from the NYYC, but had failed to secure Charlie Barr to skipper his new yacht Constitution. Instead, the Columbiaʼs syndicate kept Barr's crew and tried another defense. Unexpectedly, Barr led the Columbiaʼs crew to win the selection trials, and to successfully defend the cup again.

Lipton persisted in a third challenge in 1903. With the aim to fend off Lipton's challenges indefinitely, the NYYC garnered a huge budget for a single cup contender, whose design would be commissioned to Herreshoff again. Improving on the Independence and his previous designs, the new defender Reliance remains the largest race sloop ever built. She featured a ballasted rudder, dual-speed winches below decks, and a cork-decked aluminium topside that hid running rigging. The design focus on balance was exemplary, but the extreme yacht also required the skills of an excellent skipper, which defaulted choice options to Charlie Barr. Facing the equally bold challenger Shamrock III, Barr led the Reliance to victory in just three races.[27]

Despite the immense success of the Reliance, she was used only one season, her design and maintenance keeping her from being used for any other purpose than for a cup defense. The extremity of both 1903 cup contenders encouraged Nathanael Herreshoff to make boats more wholesome and durable by devising a new rule. Proposing in the same year the Universal Rule, he added the elements of overall length and displacement into the rating, to the benefit of heavy, voluminous hulls and also divided boats into classes, without handicapping sail area. This went against the American Yacht Clubs' and the British Yacht Racing Association's general desire to promote speed at all costs for cup boats, but the NYYC adopted Herreshoff's proposal. Lipton long pleaded for a smaller size of yachts in the new rule, and the NYYC conceded to seventy-five footers in 1914. Lipton turned to Charles Ernest Nicholson for his fourth challenge, and got a superb design under the inauspicious shape of Shamrock IV, with a flat transom.[28] She was the most powerful yacht that year, and the NYYC turned out three cup candidates to defend the cup: of George Owen's Defiance and William Gardner's Vanitie, it was Herreshoff who designed the wisest of all contenders.[29] His last design for the cup, the Resolute, was small, which earned significant time allowance over other yachts. Barr had died, but his crew manned the Resolute, which faced stiff competition from Vanitie, but went on to win the selection trials, before the Cup was suspended as World War I broke out.

Shamrock IV was crossing the Atlantic with the steam yacht Erin, destined for Bermuda, when Britain declared war on Germany on 5 August 1914. Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, the Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, sent his own yacht, the Vagrant, from Rhode Island to Bermuda to meet them and escort them to the US. The Vagrant arrived on the 8th. Having no radio, the crew were unaware of the declaration of war. Finding all navigational markers missing, they attempted to pick their own way in through the barrier reef. St. David's Battery fired a warning shot to bring them to a halt. Shamrock IV and Erin arrived the next day. The America's Cup was cancelled for that year.

The Shamrock IV and Erin proceeded to New York, from where the Erin returned to Britain while Shamrock IV was laid up in the Erie Basin dry dock until 1920, when she received some adjustments to her build and ballast, just before the races were held. Despite Shamrock IV's severe rating, she took the first two races from the defender Resolute, and came closer to winning back the Cup than any previous challenger. The Resolute won every subsequent race of the event.[30]

Shamrock IV was never raced again, but the universal rule drew significant appeal, especially in the small M-Class. Believing that the new rule offered a serious opportunity for the British to take the Cup, Lipton challenged for the fifth and last time at age 79, in 1929. The J-Class was chosen for the contest, to which were added Lloyds' A1 scantling rules in order to ensure that the yachts would be seaworthy and evenly matched, given the Deed of Gift requirement for yachts to sail to the match on their "own bottom." The waterline length was set between 76 ft (23.16 m) and 88 ft (26.82 m), and there would be no time allowance. Novel rigging technology now permitted the Bermuda rig to replace the gaff rig. Nicholson was chosen to design challenger Shamrock V, and despite the Wall Street Crash, four NYYC syndicates responded to the threat and built a cup contender each.[31] The venue was moved to Newport, Rhode Island, where, the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company's new naval architect Starling Burgess used his success in the M-Class and his experience as a wartime plane designer to build the Vanderbilt syndicate's defender Enterprise, the smallest J-Class. Meanwhile, Herreshoff's son, Lewis Francis Herreshoff, designed a radical boat: The Whirlwind, despite being the most advanced boat with her double-ended "canoe" build and electronic instruments, maneuvered too clumsily. The old 75-footers Resolute and Vanitie were rebuilt and converted to the J-Class to serve as trial horses. The Enterprise's skipper Harold Vanderbilt won the selection trials with great difficulty. When Shamrock V was revealed, she was an outdated wooden boat with a wooden mast and performed poorly to windward. Enterprise was then fitted with the World's first duralumin mast, very lightweight at 4,000 lb (1,800 kg), and beat her opponent soundly.[32]

Lipton died in 1931, and English aviation industrialist Sir Thomas Sopwith bought Shamrock V with the intent of preparing the next challenge. To Nicholson's skills, he added aeronautical expertise and materials that would intensify the rivalry into a technological race. In 1934, the Royal Yacht Squadron issued a challenge for Sopwith's newly built challenger Endeavour. Being steel-plated, she was less disfavoured than Shamrock V, especially after a minimum mast weight limit was set to 5,500 lb (2,500 kg), as this made American duralumin technology less advantageous for this contest. Endeavour received significant innovations, but Sopwith failed to secure the services of his entire Shamrock V professional crew due to a pay strike. He hired amateurs to complete his team, and while the Endeavour was described unanimously as the faster boat in the Cup, taking the first two races, failed tactics and crew inexperience lost her the following four races to Vanderbilt's new defender Rainbow.[33]

To challenge again, Sopwith prepared himself a year early. In 1936 Nicholson designed and built the Endeavour II to the maximum waterline length allowed, and numerous updates to the rig made her even faster than her predecessor. A change in the America's Cup rules now allowed a contending yacht to be declared 30 days before the races, so both the Endeavour and Endeavour II were shipped to Newport, where the RYS held selection series before declaring Endeavour II as the challenger. Meanwhile, Harold S. Vanderbilt, taking all syndicate defense costs to himself, commissioned Starling Burgess and the young designer Olin Stephens to provide designs. They anonymously produced three designs each, and thoroughly tank-tested boat models of the six designs, until model 77-C was selected for its projected performance in light airs. The resulting defender Ranger was even more accomplished than her challenger, and Vanderbilt steered his last J-Class boat to a straight victory.[34][35]

The J-class yachts from the 1930s remained the default for the cup, but post-war economic realities meant that no-one could afford to challenge in this hugely expensive class. As twenty years had passed since the last challenge, the NYYC looked for a cheaper alternative in order to restart interest in the cup. In 1956 Henry Sears[36] led an effort to replace the J-class yachts with 12-metre class yachts, which are approximately 65 to 75 feet (20 to 23Â m) in overall length.

The first post-war challenge was in 1958, again from the British. Briggs Cunningham, the inventor of the cunningham sail control device, as skipper with Sears as navigator led Columbia to victory against Sceptre, which was designed by David Boyd at Alexander Robertson and Sons Ltd (Yachtbuilders), for a Royal Yacht Squadron Syndicate, chaired by Hugh Goodson.

The first Australian challenge was in 1962, when Gretel lost to the NYYC's Weatherly, designed by Philip Rhodes.

A second Boyd/Robertson challenger, Sovereign, lost to the Olin Stephensâ€“designed Constellation in 1964. In 1967, another Australian challenger, Dame Pattie, lost to the innovative Olin Stephens design Intrepid (which won again in 1970, to become the second yacht, after Columbia, to defend the Cup twice).

For the 1970 America's Cup, interest in challenging was so high that the NYYC allowed the Challenger of Record (the original yacht club presenting the challenge accepted for the match) to organize a regatta among multiple challengers with the winner being substituted as challenger and going on to the cup match. This innovation has been used ever since, except for the default deed of gift matches in 1988 and 2010.

Alan Bond, an Australian businessman, made three unsuccessful challenges between 1974 and 1980. In 1974 the cup was successfully defended by Courageous, which successfully defended again in 1977, at which time she was skippered by Ted Turner. In 1980 the Cup was defended by Freedom.

Bond returned in 1983 for a fourth challenge, complete with a symbolic golden wrench which he claimed would be used to unbolt the cup from its plinth, so that he could take it back to Australia. In 1983 there were seven challengers for the cup competing for the inaugural Louis Vuitton Cup, the winner of which would go on to the America's Cup match against the NYYC's yacht selected in their trials. Bond's yacht, Australia II, designed by Ben Lexcen, skippered by John Bertrand, and representing the Royal Perth Yacht Club, easily won the Louis Vuitton challenger series, and Dennis Conner in Liberty was selected for the Cup defense.[citation needed]

Sporting the now famous Boxing Kangaroo flag and the controversial winged keel designed by Ben Lexcen, the hull of Australia II was kept under wraps between races and was subject to attempts by the NYYC to disqualify the boat. In the cup races, the Australians got off to a bad start with equipment failures and false starts giving the defenders a head start. But it was not to be a repeat of the last 132 years: the Australians came back to win the 1983 America's Cup 4â€“3 in a best-of-seven format. This was the first time the NYYC had lost the cup in 132 years and 26 challenges. Alan Bond joked that the cup would be renamed "The Australia's Cup".[citation needed]

For the first time since its inception the America's Cup was defended outside of the US off the coast of Fremantle. This was a new era for the cup with interest in competing being shown by many countries.

Representing the San Diego Yacht Club, Conner returned to win the 1987 America's Cup. His yacht Stars & Stripes 87 earned the right to challenge by winning the 1987 Louis Vuitton Cup against an unprecedented field of 13 challenger syndicates. In the America's Cup regatta he faced defender Iain Murray sailing Kookaburra III, who had defeated Alan Bond's Australia IV in the defender selection trials. Stars & Stripes 87 defeated Kookaburra III four races to nil.

Technology was now playing an increasing role in yacht design. The 1983 winner, Australia II, had sported the revolutionary winged keel, and the New Zealand boat that Conner had beaten in the Louis Vuitton Cup final in Fremantle was the first 12-metre class to have a hull of fiberglass, rather than aluminum or wood.

The 12-metre class rules stipulated that the hull had to be the same thickness throughout and could not be made lighter in the bow and stern. The other challengers demanded that core samples be taken from the plastic hull to show its thickness. At one press conference Dennis Conner asked, "Why would you build a plastic yacht... unless you wanted to cheat?" Despite attempts to defuse the situation, the "cheating comment" added to the controversy surrounding the Louis Vuitton challenge races. Chris Dickson, skipper of the Kiwi Magic (KZ 7), took the controversy in stride and with humor, and Conner has subsequently stated his regret over his comment.[37] New Zealand syndicate head Sir Michael Fay's comment was that core samples would be taken "over my dead body". Eventually some small holes were drilled to test the hull, and ultrasonic testing was done to rule out air pockets in the construction. The boat was found to be within class rules, and the issue was set aside. Fay ceremoniously lay down in front of the measurer before the samples were taken.

In 1987, soon after Conner had won back the cup with Stars and Stripes but before the San Diego Yacht Club had publicly issued terms for the next regatta, a New Zealand syndicate, again led by merchant banker Sir Michael Fay, lodged a surprise challenge. Fay challenged with a gigantic yacht named New Zealand (KZ1) or the Big Boat, which with a 90-foot (27Â m) waterline, was the largest single masted yacht possible under the original rules of the cup trust deed. This was an unwelcome challenge to the San Diego Yacht Club, who wanted to continue to run Cup regattas using 12-metre yachts.[38] A legal battle ensued over the challenge, with Justice Carmen Ciparick of the New York State Supreme (trial) Court (which administers the Deed of Gift) ruling that Fay's challenge on behalf of Mercury Bay Boating Club (MBBC) was valid. The court ordered SDYC to accept it and negotiate mutually agreeable terms for a match, or to race under the default provisions of the Deed, or to forfeit the cup to MBBC.

Forced to race, and lacking time for preparation, Conner and SDYC looked for a way to prevail. They recognized that a catamaran was not expressly prohibited under the rules. Multihulls, due to a lower wetted surface area and vastly lower mass, are inherently faster than equal-length monohulls. Conner, however, left nothing to chance and commissioned a cutting edge design with a wing sail, named—as his 12-metre yachts had been—Stars and Stripes.

The two yachts raced under the simple terms of the deed in September, 1988. New Zealand predictably lost by a huge margin. Fay then took SDYC back to court, arguing that the race had been unfair, certainly not the "friendly competition between nations", envisaged in the Deed of Gift. Ciparick agreed and awarded New Zealand the Cup. However, Ciparick's decision was overturned on appeal and SDYC's win was reinstated. Fay then appealed to New York's highest court and lost. Thus SDYC successfully defended the cup in what observers described as the most controversial cup match to that point.[39] (The 2010 America's Cup was a direct descendant of the 1988 cup, as it featured two gigantic multi-hull yachts and generated even more legal activity and controversy ).

In the wake of the 1988 controversies, the International America's Cup Class (IACC) was introduced, replacing the 12-metre class that had been used since 1958.

In 1992, USA-23 of the America³ team, skippered by billionaire Bill Koch and sailing legend Harry “Buddy” Melges, defeated the Italian challenger Il Moro ITA-25, owned by billionaire Raul Gardini's Il Moro di Venezia, 4–1.

In 1995, the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron syndicate Team New Zealand, skippered by Russell Coutts, first won the challenger series in NZL 32, dubbed "Black Magic" because of her black hull and uncanny speed. Black Magic then easily defeated Dennis Connor's Stars & Stripes team, 5â€“0, to win the cup for New Zealand. Although team Young America's cup candidate yacht USA-36 was defeated in defender trials by Stars & Stripes' USA-34, the San Diego Yacht Club elected to defend the cup with USA-36 crewed by Stars & Stripes. The run-up to the 1995 Cup was notable for the televised sinking of oneAustralia during the fourth round robin of the Louis Vuitton challenger selection series, with all hands escaping uninjured. The 1995 defender selection series also had the first mostly female (with one man) crew sailing the yacht USA-43, nicknamed "Mighty Mary".

On 14 March 1996, a man entered the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron's clubroom and damaged the America's Cup with a sledgehammer. The man, Benjamin Peri Nathan, was subsequently found guilty of criminal damage and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment (reduced from 34 months on appeal). The damage was so severe that it was feared that the cup was irreparable. London's Garrards silversmiths, who had manufactured the cup in 1848, painstakingly restored the trophy to its original condition over three months, free of charge. In 2003, an extra 20Â cm was added to the cup's base to accommodate the names of future winners.

At Auckland in 1999â€“2000, Team New Zealand, led by Sir Peter Blake, and again skippered by Russell Coutts, defeated the Italian Prada Challenge from the Yacht Club Punta Ala. The Italians had previously beaten the AmericaOne syndicate from the St Francis Yacht Club in the Louis Vuitton Cup final. This was the first America's Cup to be contested without an American challenger or defender.

During the Twelve-Metre era, the New York Yacht Club, citing the Deed language that the Cup should be "perpetually a Challenge Cup for friendly competition between foreign countries", had adopted several interpretive resolutions intended to strengthen nationality requirements. By 1980, these resolutions specified that besides being constructed in the country of the challenger or defender, a yacht had to be designed by and crewed by nationals of the country where the yacht club was located. Globalization made it increasingly impractical to enforce design nationality rules, and starting in 1984, the Royal Perth Yacht Club began relaxing this requirement. Numerous members of the New Zealand AC 2000 team became key members of the Swiss 2003 Alinghi challenge, led by biotechnology entrepreneur Ernesto Bertarelli. To satisfy the crew nationality requirements, New Zealand team members of Alinghi took up residence in Switzerland.

In 2003, several strong challengers vied for the right to sail for the cup in Auckland during the challenger selection series. Bertarelli's team representing the Swiss yacht club, Société Nautique de Genève (SNG), beat all her rivals in the Louis Vuitton Cup and in turn won the America's Cup 5–0. In doing so, Alinghi became the first European team in 152 years of the event’s history to win the cup.

For the 2007 challenge, SNG rescinded all interpretive resolutions to the deed, essentially leaving "constructed in country" as the only remaining nationality requirement. The 2007 defense of the cup was held in Valencia, Spain. This was the first time since the original 1851 Isle of Wight race that the America's Cup regatta had been held in Europe, or in a country different from that of the defender (necessary because Switzerland, despite having huge lakes and a national passion for sailing, does not border a "sea or arm of the sea" as specified in the Deed). Eleven challenging yacht clubs from 9 countries submitted formal entries. The challenger selection series, the Louis Vuitton Cup 2007, ran from 16 April to 6 June 2007. Emirates Team New Zealand won the challenger series finale 5–0 against Italians Luna Rossa and met Alinghi between 23 June and 3 July 2007. Ernesto Bertarelli's Team- Alinghi successfully defended the America's Cup 5–2, under the colors of SNG.

After Société Nautique de Genève successfully defended the trophy in the 32nd America's Cup, they accepted a challenge from Club Náutico Español de Vela, a Spanish yacht club formed expressly for the purpose of challenging for the cup and keeping the regatta in Valencia. When SNG and CNEV published their protocol for the 33rd America's Cup, there was criticism over its terms, with some teams and yacht clubs calling it the worst protocol in the history of the event.[40] Golden Gate Yacht Club (GGYC) then filed its own challenge for the cup and also filed a court case asking that CNEV be removed as being unqualified under the deed of gift, and that GGYC be named the challenger, being the first club to file a conforming challenge.[41]

There followed a long and acrimonious legal battle,[42] with the New York Court of Appeals finally deciding on 2 April 2009 that CNEV did not qualify as valid challenger, and that the GGYC was thus the rightful challenger.[43]

Since the two parties were unable to agree otherwise, the match took place as a one-on-one Deed of Gift match[nb 1] with no other clubs or teams participating.

The match was sailed in gigantic, specialized 90 ft (27 m) multihull yachts in a best-of-three race series in Valencia, Spain from 8 to 14 February 2010. The rigid wing sail of the challenging trimaran USA-17 provided a decisive advantage, and it won the 2010 America's Cup 2–0.[44][45][46][47]

The Challenger of Record for the 34th America's Cup was Club Nautico di Roma, whose team Mascalzone Latino had competed in the challenger selection series for the 2007 America's Cup.[48][49] In September, 2010, GGYC and Club Nautico di Roma announced the protocol for AC34, scheduling the match for 2013 in a new class of boat, the AC72, a wing-sailed catamaran. Paralleling the "Acts" of the 32nd America's Cup—a series of preliminary events in different venues leading-up to the actual event—a new series, the America's Cup World Series was to be run using AC45 class boats (smaller one-design versions of the AC72s), in various world venues in 2011 and 2012.[50][51]

On 12 May 2011, Club Nautico di Roma withdrew from the competition, citing challenges in raising sufficient funds to field a competitive team.[52][53] As the second yacht club to file a challenge, the Royal Swedish Yacht Club assumed the duties of the challenger.[54]

Rumors of stable hydrofoiling of an AC72 were confirmed when Team New Zealand's AC72 yacht Aotearoa was seen to be sailing on hydrofoils in August, 2012.[55] This triggered a technology race in foil development and control.[56] The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron won the right to sail in the America's Cup match easily beating the Italian and Swedish challengers in the Louis Vuitton Cup. The resulting match between the USA and NZ was the longest on record both in calendar time, and the number of races, with the Golden Gate Yacht Club staging an improbable come-from-behind victory, winning eight straight races to defend the cup and beat New Zealand 9â€“8.

Oracle Team USA was defending the America's Cup May 26–June 27, 2017 on behalf of the Golden Gate Yacht Club in Bermuda[57] where racing took place on the Great Sound. Preliminary races were held in Portsmouth, Gothenburg, and Bermuda in foiling AC45s. After the 2013 America's Cup, the Golden Gate Yacht Club accepted a notice of challenge from the Hamilton Island Yacht Club, with whom a new protocol and a smaller 62 ft (19 m) wingsail foiling catamaran class rule were proposed in cooperation with participating challengers.[58] The Hamilton Island Yacht Club withdrew from the America's Cup in July 2014, citing unanticipated cost in mounting its challenge.[59] The exiting challenger of record was replaced by a challenger committee, where decisions are made by popular vote. When an even smaller 50ft wingsail foiling catamaran class rule amendment was voted in April 2015, Luna Rossa Challenge also withdrew, citing significant costs wasted on the development of the larger vessel.[60] Yachts from France, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK remained in the competition to challenge for the cup. In June 2016, for the first time in history, an America's Cup race included fresh water sailing, when preliminary races were held on Lake Michigan, based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, North America.[61][62] Emirates Team New Zealand won the 2017 Louis Vuitton Cup and challenging the defender, Emirates Team NZ, won the America's Cup with a score of 7 to 1.[63]

The next America's Cup will see the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron defend the cup. The Challenger of Record is Circolo della Vela Sicilia who will be represented by their team Luna Rossa Challenge.[64] The event will be held in the southern summer, in the early part of 2021.[4]

New York Yacht Club: 25–1
 Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron: 3–3
 San Diego Yacht Club: 3–1
 Société Nautique de Genève: 2–1
 Golden Gate Yacht Club: 2–1
 Royal Perth Yacht Club: 1–3

In 1928 Goodyear chairman Paul W. Litchfield began a tradition of naming the company's blimps after America's Cup yachts, including America, Puritan, Mayflower, Volunteer, Vigilant, Defender, Reliance, Resolute, Enterprise, Rainbow, Ranger, Columbia and Stars & Stripes.[68]


what are the white marks on your fingernails

Leukonychia (or leuconychia), also known as white nails or milk spots,[1] is a medical term for white discolouration appearing on nails.[2]:658â€“9 It is derived from the Greek words leuko ("white") and nychia ("nails"). The most common cause is injury to the base of the nail (the matrix) where the nail is formed.

Leukonychia

It is harmless and most commonly caused by minor injuries, such as nail biting, that occur while the nail is growing.[3] Leukonychia occurs most commonly in healthy individuals, unrelated to any known nutritional or physiological deficiency.[4] When caused by injury the marks will disappear as the nail grows outwards, however a dietary deficiency will cause recurrent leukonychia.

Other possible reasons for this problem with nail colour can be linked to:

This condition is a whitening of the entire nail. This may be a clinical sign of hypoalbuminaemia (low albumin), which can be seen in nephrotic syndrome (a form of kidney failure), liver failure, protein malabsorption and protein-losing enteropathies. A genetic condition, and a side effect of sulphonamides (a family of antibiotics) can also cause this appearance.

This condition is whitening of parts of the nail plate in form of small white dots. There are several types of this condition. There are three different variations of partial leukonychia; punctate, transverse and longitudinal leukonychia. Some more serious variations of leukonychia partialis may lead to Leukonychia totalis.[4]

Leukonychia striata, transverse leukonychia, or Mees' lines are a whitening or discoloration of the nail in bands or "stria" that run parallel the lunula (nail base). This is commonly caused by physical injury or disruption of the nail matrix. Common examples include excessive tapping of the nails, slamming a car door or extensive use of manicure.[6] It may also occur in great toenails as a result of trauma from footwear. Alternatively, the condition can be caused by heavy metal poisoning most commonly by lead.[7] It can also be caused by cirrhosis or chemotherapy.[8] The tendency toward leukonychia striata is sometimes inherited in an autosomal dominant fashion. In other cases, it can be attributed to vigorous manicuring and trauma aforementioned, or to a wide variety of systemic illnesses. Serious infections known for high fevers, measles, malaria, herpes, and leprosy may also cause this condition. In many patients, there is no obvious cause, and the streaks resolve spontaneously.[9] There is a similar condition called Muehrcke's lines (apparent leukonychia) which differs from leukonychia in that the lines fade with digital compression and does not migrate with the growth of the nail.[10]

Also known as "true" leukonychia, this is the most common form of leukonychia, in which small white spots appear on the nails. Picking and biting of the nails are a prominent cause in young children and nail biters. Besides parakeratosis, air that is trapped between the cells may also cause this appearance.[4] It is also caused by trauma. In most cases, when white spots appear on a single or a couple of fingers or toes, the most common cause is injury to the base (matrix) of the nail. When this is the case, white spots disappear after around eight months, which is the amount of time necessary for nails to regrow completely. The pattern and number of spots may change as the nail grows.[11]

Longitudinal leukonychia is far less common and features smaller 1mm white longitudinal lines visible under the nail plate. It may be associated with Darier's disease.[4]

A doctor will take a thorough medical history, and may take blood tests as well as examining liver and kidney function. Improvements have also been reported from treating malnutrition associated with zinc deficiency and other minerals[12][13]. Intracellular (red blood cell) assays are more sensitive than tests for plasma levels[14].


where did metallica play in france in 2009

Français pour une nuit (English: French for One Night) is a live DVD by the American heavy metal band Metallica, recorded in Nîmes, France, in the Arena of Nîmes on July 7, 2009, during the World Magnetic Tour.  It was released in three formats. A standard DVD in a digipak including a 16-page booklet, a Blu-ray, also in a digipak with the booklet and a deluxe limited edition box set including the DVD, a copy of Death Magnetic on CD, a T-shirt, laminated pass, and five exclusive photos. Despite only being issued in France, it has been imported in sufficient quantity to be considered a regular release. Aside from the photography by Ross Halfin, the entire project was made by French professionals, from the video to the art direction.[1]

Français Pour une Nuit

*sales figures based on certification alone^shipments figures based on certification alone


when was css first proposed as a standard by the w3c

CSS was first proposed by Håkon Wium Lie on October 10, 1994.[17] At the time, Lie was working with Tim Berners-Lee at CERN.[18] Several other style sheet languages for the web were proposed around the same time, and discussions on public mailing lists and inside World Wide Web Consortium resulted in the first W3C CSS Recommendation (CSS1)[19] being released in 1996. In particular, Bert Bos' proposal was influential; he became co-author of CSS1 and is regarded as co-creator of CSS.[20]

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language.[1] Although most often used to set the visual style of web pages and user interfaces written in HTML and XHTML, the language can be applied to any XML document, including plain XML, SVG and XUL, and is applicable to rendering in speech, or on other media. Along with HTML and JavaScript, CSS is a cornerstone technology used by most websites to create visually engaging webpages, user interfaces for web applications, and user interfaces for many mobile applications.[2]

CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of presentation and content, including aspects such as the layout, colors, and fonts.[3] This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple HTML pages to share formatting by specifying the relevant CSS in a separate.css file, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content.

Separation of formatting and content makes it possible to present the same markup page in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (via speech-based browser or screen reader), and on Braille-based tactile devices. It can also display the web page differently depending on the screen size or viewing device. Readers can also specify a different style sheet, such as a CSS file stored on their own computer, to override the one the author specified.

Changes to the graphic design of a document (or hundreds of documents) can be applied quickly and easily, by editing a few lines in the CSS file they use, rather than by changing markup in the documents.

The CSS specification describes a priority scheme to determine which style rules apply if more than one rule matches against a particular element. In this so-called cascade, priorities (or weights) are calculated and assigned to rules, so that the results are predictable.

The CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Internet media type (MIME type) text/css is registered for use with CSS by RFC 2318 (March 1998). The W3C operates a free CSS validation service for CSS documents.[4]

CSS has a simple syntax and uses a number of English keywords to specify the names of various style properties.

A style sheet consists of a list of rules. Each rule or rule-set consists of one or more selectors, and a declaration block.

In CSS, selectors declare which part of the markup a style applies to by matching tags and attributes in the markup itself.

Selectors may apply to:

Classes and IDs are case-sensitive, start with letters, and can include alphanumeric characters and underscores. A class may apply to any number of instances of any elements. An ID may only be applied to a single element.

Pseudo-classes are used in CSS selectors to permit formatting based on information that is not contained in the document tree. One example of a widely used pseudo-class is :hover, which identifies content only when the user "points to" the visible element, usually by holding the mouse cursor over it. It is appended to a selector as in a:hover or #elementid:hover. A pseudo-class classifies document elements, such as :link or :visited, whereas a pseudo-element makes a selection that may consist of partial elements, such as ::first-line or ::first-letter.[5]

Selectors may be combined in many ways to achieve great specificity and flexibility.[6] Multiple selectors may be joined in a spaced list to specify elements by location, element type, id, class, or any combination thereof. The order of the selectors is important. For example, div.myClass {color: red;} applies to all elements of class myClass that are inside div elements, whereas.myClass div {color: red;} applies to all div elements that are in elements of class myClass.

The following table provides a summary of selector syntax indicating usage and the version of CSS that introduced it.[7]

A declaration block consists of a list of declarations in braces. Each declaration itself consists of a property, a colon (:), and a value. If there are multiple declarations in a block, a semi-colon (;) must be inserted to separate each declaration.[8]

Properties are specified in the CSS standard. Each property has a set of possible values. Some properties can affect any type of element, and others apply only to particular groups of elements.[9]

Values may be keywords, such as "center" or "inherit", or numerical values, such as 200px (200 pixels), 50vw (50 percent of the viewport width) or 80% (80 percent of the window width). Color values can be specified with keywords (e.g. "red"), hexadecimal values (e.g. #FF0000, also abbreviated as #F00), RGB values on a 0 to 255 scale (e.g. rgb(255, 0, 0)), RGBA values that specify both color and alpha transparency (e.g. rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.8)), or HSL or HSLA values (e.g. hsl(000, 100%, 50%), hsla(000, 100%, 50%, 80%)).[10]

Before CSS, nearly all presentational attributes of HTML documents were contained within the HTML markup. All font colors, background styles, element alignments, borders and sizes had to be explicitly described, often repeatedly, within the HTML. CSS lets authors move much of that information to another file, the style sheet, resulting in considerably simpler HTML.

For example, headings (h1 elements), sub-headings (h2), sub-sub-headings (h3), etc., are defined structurally using HTML. In print and on the screen, choice of font, size, color and emphasis for these elements is presentational.

Before CSS, document authors who wanted to assign such typographic characteristics to, say, all h2 headings had to repeat HTML presentational markup for each occurrence of that heading type. This made documents more complex, larger, and more error-prone and difficult to maintain. CSS allows the separation of presentation from structure. CSS can define color, font, text alignment, size, borders, spacing, layout and many other typographic characteristics, and can do so independently for on-screen and printed views. CSS also defines non-visual styles, such as reading speed and emphasis for aural text readers. The W3C has now deprecated the use of all presentational HTML markup.[11]

For example, under pre-CSS HTML, a heading element defined with red text would be written as:

Using CSS, the same element can be coded using style properties instead of HTML presentational attributes:

The advantages of this may not be immediately clear (since the second form is actually more verbose), but the power of CSS becomes more apparent when the style properties are placed in an internal style element or, even better, an external CSS file. For example, suppose the document contains the style element:

All h1 elements in the document will then automatically become red without any requiring any explicit code. If the author later wanted to make h1 elements blue instead, this could be done by changing the style element to:

rather than by laboriously going through the document and changing the color for each individual h1 element.

The styles can also be placed in an external CSS file, as described below, and loaded using syntax similar to:

This further decouples the styling from the HTML document, and makes it possible to restyle multiple documents by simply editing a shared external CSS file.

CSS information can be provided from various sources. These sources can be the web browser, the user and the author. The information from the author can be further classified into inline, media type, importance, selector specificity, rule order, inheritance and property definition. CSS style information can be in a separate document or it can be embedded into an HTML document. Multiple style sheets can be imported. Different styles can be applied depending on the output device being used; for example, the screen version can be quite different from the printed version, so that authors can tailor the presentation appropriately for each medium.

The style sheet with the highest priority controls the content display. Declarations not set in the highest priority source are passed on to a source of lower priority, such as the user agent style. This process is called cascading.

One of the goals of CSS is to allow users greater control over presentation. Someone who finds red italic headings difficult to read may apply a different style sheet. Depending on the browser and the web site, a user may choose from various style sheets provided by the designers, or may remove all added styles and view the site using the browser's default styling, or may override just the red italic heading style without altering other attributes.

Specificity refers to the relative weights of various rules.[12] It determines which styles apply to an element when more than one rule could apply. Based on specification, a simple selector (e.g. H1) has a specificity of 1, class selectors have a specificity of 1,0, and ID selectors a specificity of 1,0,0. Because the specificity values do not carry over as in the decimal system, commas are used to separate the "digits"[13] (a CSS rule having 11 elements and 11 classes would have a specificity of 11,11, not 121).

Thus the following rules selectors result in the indicated specificity:

Consider this HTML fragment:

In the above example, the declaration in the style attribute overrides the one in the <style> element because it has a higher specificity.

Inheritance is a key feature in CSS; it relies on the ancestor-descendant relationship to operate. Inheritance is the mechanism by which properties are applied not only to a specified element, but also to its descendants.[12] Inheritance relies on the document tree, which is the hierarchy of XHTML elements in a page based on nesting. Descendant elements may inherit CSS property values from any ancestor element enclosing them. In general, descendant elements inherit text-related properties, but box-related properties are not inherited. Properties that can be inherited are color, font, letter-spacing, line-height, list-style, text-align, text-indent, text-transform, visibility, white-space and word-spacing. Properties that cannot be inherited are background, border, display, float and clear, height, and width, margin, min- and max-height and -width, outline, overflow, padding, position, text-decoration, vertical-align and z-index.

Inheritance can be used to avoid declaring certain properties over and over again in a style sheet, allowing for shorter CSS.

Inheritance in CSS is not the same as inheritance in class-based programming languages, where it is possible to define class B as "like class A, but with modifications".[14] With CSS, it is possible to style an element with "class A, but with modifications". However, it is not possible to define a CSS class B like that, which could then be used to style multiple elements without having to repeat the modifications.

Given the following style sheet:

Suppose there is an h1 element with an emphasizing element (em) inside:

If no color is assigned to the em element, the emphasized word "illustrate" inherits the color of the parent element, h1. The style sheet h1 has the color pink, hence, the em element is likewise pink.

Whitespace between properties and selectors is ignored. This code snippet:

is functionally equivalent to this one:

One common way to format CSS for readability is to indent each property and give it its own line.

CSSÂ 2.1 defines three positioning schemes:

There are four possible values of the position property. If an item is positioned in any way other than static, then the further properties top, bottom, left, and right are used to specify offsets and positions.

The float property may have one of three values. Absolutely positioned or fixed items cannot be floated. Other elements normally flow around floated items, unless they are prevented from doing so by their clear property.

Style sheets have existed in one form or another since the beginnings of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) in the 1980s, and CSS was developed to provide style sheets for the web.[21] One requirement for a web style sheet language was for style sheets to come from different sources on the web. Therefore, existing style sheet languages like DSSSL and FOSI were not suitable. CSS, on the other hand, let a document's style be influenced by multiple style sheets by way of "cascading" styles.[21]

As HTML grew, it came to encompass a wider variety of stylistic capabilities to meet the demands of web developers. This evolution gave the designer more control over site appearance, at the cost of more complex HTML. Variations in web browser implementations, such as ViolaWWW and WorldWideWeb,[22] made consistent site appearance difficult, and users had less control over how web content was displayed. The browser/editor developed by Tim Berners-Lee had style sheets that were hard-coded into the program. The style sheets could therefore not be linked to documents on the web.[23] Robert Cailliau, also of CERN, wanted to separate the structure from the presentation so that different style sheets could describe different presentation for printing, screen-based presentations, and editors.[22]

Improving web presentation capabilities was a topic of interest to many in the web community and nine different style sheet languages were proposed on the www-style mailing list.[21] Of these nine proposals, two were especially influential on what became CSS: Cascading HTML Style Sheets[17] and Stream-based Style Sheet Proposal (SSP).[20][24] Two browsers served as testbeds for the initial proposals; Lie worked with Yves Lafon to implement CSS in Dave Raggett's Arena browser.[25][26][27] Bert Bos implemented his own SSP proposal in the Argo browser.[20] Thereafter, Lie and Bos worked together to develop the CSS standard (the 'H' was removed from the name because these style sheets could also be applied to other markup languages besides HTML).[18]

Lie's proposal was presented at the "Mosaic and the Web" conference (later called WWW2) in Chicago, Illinois in 1994, and again with Bert Bos in 1995.[18] Around this time the W3C was already being established, and took an interest in the development of CSS. It organized a workshop toward that end chaired by Steven Pemberton. This resulted in W3C adding work on CSS to the deliverables of the HTML editorial review board (ERB). Lie and Bos were the primary technical staff on this aspect of the project, with additional members, including Thomas Reardon of Microsoft, participating as well. In August 1996 Netscape Communication Corporation presented an alternative style sheet language called JavaScript Style Sheets (JSSS).[18] The spec was never finished and is deprecated.[28] By the end of 1996, CSS was ready to become official, and the CSS level 1 Recommendation was published in December.

Development of HTML, CSS, and the DOM had all been taking place in one group, the HTML Editorial Review Board (ERB). Early in 1997, the ERB was split into three working groups: HTML Working group, chaired by Dan Connolly of W3C; DOM Working group, chaired by Lauren Wood of SoftQuad; and CSS Working group, chaired by Chris Lilley of W3C.

The CSS Working Group began tackling issues that had not been addressed with CSS level 1, resulting in the creation of CSS level 2 on November 4, 1997. It was published as a W3C Recommendation on May 12, 1998. CSS level 3, which was started in 1998, is still under development as of 2014.

In 2005 the CSS Working Groups decided to enforce the requirements for standards more strictly. This meant that already published standards like CSS 2.1, CSS 3 Selectors and CSS 3 Text were pulled back from Candidate Recommendation to Working Draft level.

The CSS 1 specification was completed in 1996. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3[18] was released in that year, featuring some limited support for CSS. IE 4 and Netscape 4.x added more support, but it was typically incomplete and had many bugs that prevented CSS from being usefully adopted. It was more than three years before any web browser achieved near-full implementation of the specification. Internet Explorer 5.0 for the Macintosh, shipped in March 2000, was the first browser to have full (better than 99 percent) CSS 1 support,[29] surpassing Opera, which had been the leader since its introduction of CSS support 15 months earlier. Other browsers followed soon afterwards, and many of them additionally implemented parts of CSS 2.

However, even when later'version 5' browsers began to offer a fairly full implementation of CSS, they were still incorrect in certain areas and were fraught with inconsistencies, bugs and other quirks. The inconsistencies and variation in feature support made it difficult for designers to achieve a consistent appearance across browsers and platforms, leading to the use of workarounds such as CSS hacks and filters.

Problems with browsers' patchy adoption of CSS, along with errata in the original specification, led the W3C to revise the CSS 2 standard into CSS 2.1, which moved nearer to a working snapshot of current CSS support in HTML browsers. Some CSS 2 properties that no browser successfully implemented were dropped, and in a few cases, defined behaviors were changed to bring the standard into line with the predominant existing implementations. CSS 2.1 became a Candidate Recommendation on February 25, 2004, but CSS 2.1 was pulled back to Working Draft status on June 13, 2005,[30] and only returned to Candidate Recommendation status on July 19, 2007.[31]

In addition to these problems, the.css extension was used by a software product used to convert PowerPoint files into Compact Slide Show files,[32] so some web servers served all.css[33] as mime type application/x-pointplus[34] rather than text/css.

CSS has various levels and profiles. Each level of CSS builds upon the last, typically adding new features and typically denoted as CSS 1, CSS 2, CSS 3, and CSS 4. Profiles are typically a subset of one or more levels of CSS built for a particular device or user interface. Currently there are profiles for mobile devices, printers, and television sets. Profiles should not be confused with media types, which were added in CSS 2.

The first CSS specification to become an official W3C Recommendation is CSS level 1, published on December 17, 1996. Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos are credited as the original developers.[35][36] Among its capabilities are support for

The W3C no longer maintains the CSS 1 Recommendation.[37]

CSS level 2 specification was developed by the W3C and published as a recommendation in May 1998. A superset of CSS 1, CSS 2 includes a number of new capabilities like absolute, relative, and fixed positioning of elements and z-index, the concept of media types, support for aural style sheets (which were later replaced by the CSS 3 speech modules)[38] and bidirectional text, and new font properties such as shadows.

The W3C no longer maintains the CSSÂ 2 recommendation.[39]

CSS level 2 revision 1, often referred to as "CSS 2.1", fixes errors in CSS 2, removes poorly supported or not fully interoperable features and adds already implemented browser extensions to the specification. To comply with the W3C Process for standardizing technical specifications, CSS 2.1 went back and forth between Working Draft status and Candidate Recommendation status for many years. CSS 2.1 first became a Candidate Recommendation on February 25, 2004, but it was reverted to a Working Draft on June 13, 2005 for further review. It returned to Candidate Recommendation on 19 July 2007 and then updated twice in 2009. However, because changes and clarifications were made, it again went back to Last Call Working Draft on 7 December 2010.

CSS 2.1 went to Proposed Recommendation on 12 April 2011.[40] After being reviewed by the W3C Advisory Committee, it was finally published as a W3C Recommendation on 7 June 2011.[41]

CSS 2.1 was planned as the first and final revision of level 2â€”but low priority work on CSS 2.2 began in 2015.

Unlike CSS 2, which is a large single specification defining various features, CSS 3 is divided into several separate documents called "modules". Each module adds new capabilities or extends features defined in CSS 2, preserving backward compatibility. Work on CSS level 3 started around the time of publication of the original CSS 2 recommendation. The earliest CSS 3 drafts were published in June 1999.[42]

Due to the modularization, different modules have different stability and statuses.[43] As of June 2012, there are over fifty CSS modules published from the CSS Working Group.,[42] and four of these have been published as formal recommendations:

Some modules have Candidate Recommendation (CR) status and are considered moderately stable. At CR stage, implementations are advised to drop vendor prefixes.[44]

There is no single, integrated CSS4 specification,[46] because it is split into separate modules. However, there are "level 4" modules.[47]

Because CSS3 split the CSS language's definition into modules, the modules have been allowed to level independently. Most modules are level 3â€”they build on things from CSS 2.1. A few level-4 modules exist (such as Image Values,[48][49] Backgrounds & Borders,[50] or Selectors),[51] which build on the functionality of a preceding level-3 module. Other modules defining entirely new functionality, such as Flexbox, have been designated as "level 1".[52]

The CSS Working Group sometimes publishes “Snapshots”, a collection of whole modules and parts of other drafts that are considered stable, interoperably implemented and hence ready to use. So far, four such best current practices document have been published as Notes, in 2007,[53] 2010,[54] 2015.[55] and 2017.[56]

Each web browser uses a layout engine to render web pages, and support for CSS functionality is not consistent between them. Because browsers do not parse CSS perfectly, multiple coding techniques have been developed to target specific browsers with workarounds (commonly known as CSS hacks or CSS filters). Adoption of new functionality in CSS can be hindered by lack of support in major browsers. For example, Internet Explorer was slow to add support for many CSS 3 features, which slowed adoption of those features and damaged the browser's reputation among developers.[57] In order to ensure a consistent experience for their users, web developers often test their sites across multiple operating systems, browsers, and browser versions, increasing development time and complexity. Tools such as BrowserStack have been built to reduce the complexity of maintaining these environments.

In addition to these testing tools, many sites maintain lists of browser support for specific CSS properties, including CanIUse and the Mozilla Developer Network. Additionally, the CSS 3 defines feature queries, which provide an @supports directive that will allow developers to target browsers with support for certain functionality directly within their CSS.[58] CSS that is not supported by older browsers can also sometimes be patched in using Javascript polyfills, which are pieces of Javascript code designed to make browsers behave consistently. These workarounds—and the need to support fallback functionality—can add complexity to development projects, and consequently, companies frequently define a list of browser versions that they will and will not support.

As websites adopt newer code standards that are incompatible with older browsers, these browsers can be cut off from accessing many of the resources on the web (sometimes intentionally).[59] Many of the most popular sites on the internet are not just visually degraded on older browsers due to poor CSS support, but do not work at all, in large part due to the evolution of Javascript and other web technologies.

Some noted limitations of the current capabilities of CSS include:

Selectors are unable to ascend

Cannot explicitly declare new scope independently of position

Pseudo-class dynamic behavior not controllable

Cannot name rules

Cannot include styles from a rule into another rule

Cannot target specific text without altering markup

Vertical control limitations

Absence of expressions

Lack of column declaration

Separation of content from presentation

Site-wide consistency

CSS frameworks are pre-prepared libraries that are meant to allow for easier, more standards-compliant styling of web pages using the Cascading Style Sheets language. CSS frameworks include Foundation, Blueprint, Bootstrap, Cascade Framework and Materialize. Like programming and scripting language libraries, CSS frameworks are usually incorporated as external.css sheets referenced in the HTML <head>. They provide a number of ready-made options for designing and laying out the web page. Although many of these frameworks have been published, some authors use them mostly for rapid prototyping, or for learning from, and prefer to 'handcraft' CSS that is appropriate to each published site without the design, maintenance and download overhead of having many unused features in the site's styling.[73]

As the size of CSS resources used in a project increases, the development team needs to decide on a common methodology to keep them organized. The goals are ease of development, ease of collaboration during development and performance of the deployed stylesheets in the browser. Popular methodologies include OOCSS - object oriented CSS, ACSS - atomic CSS, oCSS - organic Cascade Style Sheet, SMACSS - scalable and modular architecture for CSS and BEM - block, element, modifier.[74]