List of Kill Bill characters

The following is a list of characters from the film Kill Bill. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, the film was released in two separate parts, Kill Bill: Volume 1 in 2003 and Kill Bill: Volume 2 in 2004. The film takes place after a massacre that killed the fiancé and friends of the main character, The Bride, at the chapel in which she was to be married; she was also thought to have been killed by being shot in the head. However, The Bride survived, but was put into a coma for four years as a result of the attack. Upon finally awakening she plots her vengeance against the killers.

Deadly Viper Assassination Squad

Beatrix Kiddo (Black Mamba, also known as The Bride)

Beatrix Kiddo, a.k.a. The Bride (portrayed by Uma Thurman), is the protagonist of the film. She abandons her life as a hired assassin for the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DVAS) upon realizing she is pregnant with Bill's child, denying him the right of fatherhood to preserve her unborn's future. This action provokes the attacks on her and her loved ones and its ensuing revenge, which is the entire basis of the film. Her code name while working for DVAS was Black Mamba.

Bill (weapon)

The bill is a polearm weapon used by infantry in medieval Europe. The bill is similar in size, function and appearance to the halberd, differing mainly in the hooked blade form. Other terms for the bill include English bill, bill hook or bill-guisarme.

Design

Derived originally from the agricultural billhook, the bill consisted of a hooked chopping blade with several pointed projections mounted on a staff. The end of the cutting blade curves forward to form a hook, which is the bill's distinguishing characteristic. In addition, the blade almost universally had one pronounced spike straight off the top like a spear head, and also a hook or spike mounted on the 'reverse' side of the blade. There were many types of bill. English bills tended to be relatively short, with broad chopping heads, while Italian bills (ronche) often had very long thrusting points. The English distinguished between several varieties of bill, including the black, brown and forest bills, but the differences between them are currently not fully understood.

List of unidentified decedents in the United States

An unidentified decedent, or UID, is a deceased person whose legal identity is unable to be determined by law enforcement. Although the majority of UIDs are identified soon after their bodies are recovered, it is not uncommon for bodies to remain unidentified for years or even decades. There are approximately 40,000 unidentified decedents in the United States at any given time.

A deceased body can be identified in several different ways. Most commonly, a relative of the deceased identifies the body by sight. However, if a body is heavily decomposed, skeletal, or unrecognizable due to severe facial trauma at the time of recovery, other methods must be used. Some other common modes of identification include fingerprints, dental records, chest x-rays, and as a last resort, comparing the deceased's DNA to the DNA sequence of a genetically close relative such as a parent or sibling. In some cases, circumstantial evidence can be used to formally identify a body; for example, if the deceased has a driver's license on their person, or is found deceased on their own property after going missing, those context clues can be used to make an identification. Since identification of a deceased individual is a legal matter, officials require a high degree of certainty in order to make a formal identification.

Races of StarCraft

Blizzard Entertainment's bestselling real-time strategy game series StarCraft revolves around interstellar affairs in a distant sector of the galaxy, with three species and multiple factions all vying for supremacy in the sector. The playable species of StarCraft include the Terrans, humans exiled from Earth who excel at adapting to any situation; the Zerg, a race of insectoids obsessed with assimilating other races in pursuit of genetic perfection; and the Protoss, a humanoid species with advanced technology and psionic abilities, attempting to preserve their civilization and strict philosophical way of living from the Zerg. Each of these races has a single campaign in each StarCraft real-time strategy game. In addition to these three, various non-playable races have also been part of the lore of the StarCraft series; the most notable of these is the Xel'Naga, a race which features prominently in the fictional histories of the Protoss and Zerg races.

The original game has sold over 10 million copies internationally, and remains one of the most popular games in the world. One of the main factors responsible for StarCraft's positive reception is the attention paid to the three unique playable races, for each of which Blizzard developed completely different characteristics, graphics, backstories and styles of gameplay, while keeping them balanced in performance against each other. Previous to this, most real-time strategy games consisted of factions and races with the same basic play styles and units with only superficial differences. The use of unique sides in StarCraft has been credited with popularizing the concept within the real-time strategy genre. Contemporary reviews of the game have mostly praised the attention to the gameplay balance between the species, as well as the fictional stories built up around them.

Marine (ocean)

Marine is an adjective for things relating to the sea or ocean, such as marine biology, marine ecology and marine geology. As a noun it can be a term for a kind of navy, those enlisted in such a navy, or members of troops attached to a navy, e.g. the United States Marine Corps.

In scientific contexts, the term almost always refers exclusively to saltwater environments, although in other contexts (e.g., engineering) it may refer to any (usually navigable) body of water.

See also

External links

Marine art

Marine art or maritime art is any form of figurative art (that is, painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture) that portrays or draws its main inspiration from the sea. Maritime painting is a genre that depicts ships and the sea—a genre particularly strong from the 17th to 19th centuries. In practice the term often covers art showing shipping on rivers and estuaries, beach scenes and all art showing boats, without any rigid distinction - for practical reasons subjects that can be drawn or painted from dry land in fact feature strongly in the genre. Strictly speaking "maritime art" should always include some element of human seafaring, whereas "marine art" would also include pure seascapes with no human element, though this distinction may not be observed in practice.

Ships and boats have been included in art from almost the earliest times, but marine art only began to become a distinct genre, with specialized artists, towards the end of the Middle Ages, mostly in the form of the "ship portrait" a type of work that is still popular and concentrates on depicting a single vessel. As landscape art emerged during the Renaissance, what might be called the marine landscape became a more important element in works, but pure seascapes were rare until later. Marine painting was a major genre within Dutch Golden Age painting, reflecting the importance of overseas trade and naval power to the Dutch Republic, and saw the first career marine artists, who painted little else. In this, as in much else, specialist and traditional marine painting has largely continued Dutch conventions to the present day. With Romantic art, the sea and the coast was reclaimed from the specialists by many landscape painters, and works including no vessels became common for the first time.