Rain Man

Rain Man is a 1988 American drama film directed by Barry Levinson and written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass. It tells the story of an abrasive and selfish young wheeler-dealer, Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise), who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed all of his multimillion-dollar estate to his other son, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), an autistic savant, of whose existence Charlie was unaware. Charlie is left only his father's car and his collection of rose bushes. In addition to the two leads, Valeria Golino stars as Charlie's girlfriend, Susanna. Morrow created the character of Raymond after meeting Kim Peek, a real-life savant; his characterization was based on both Peek and Bill Sackter, a good friend of Morrow who was the subject of Bill, an earlier film that Morrow wrote.

Rain Man received overwhelmingly positive reviews, praising Hoffman's role and the wit and sophistication of the screenplay, and was the highest-grossing film of 1988. The film won four Oscars at the 61st Academy Awards (March 1989), including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Actor in a Leading Role for Hoffman. Its crew received an additional four nominations. The film also won the Golden Bear at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival.

Kory Chavis

Kory Chavis is a professional wrestler, also known by the ring name Rainman. He currently works for several independent promotions, including Dragon Gate USA, Full Impact Pro, and Evolve. Chavis wrestled with tag team partner Jon Davis as The Dark City Fight Club , and with Davis is a former co-holder of both the NWA Florida Tag Team Championship and the NWA World Tag Team Championship. He lives in Orlando, Florida and has two children Taylor Chavis and Aryanna Chavis.

Professional wrestling career

After being trained by New Jack and Murder One in Atlanta, Georgia, Chavis made his professional wrestling debut on Match 1, 1998.

Rainman (2001–2007)

Chavis quickly began using the name Rainman, and began competing for NWA Wildside. He began teaming with Murder One (Then known as Homicide) as Blackout, and the pair won the NWA Wildside Tag Team Championship by defeating Tony Stradlin and Todd Sexton on August 10, 2001. They won the championship for the second time on November 17, 2001, when they won a four-way match for the championship. Rainman then moved into singles competition in NWA Wildside, and won the NWA Wildside Television Championship on December 28, 2002, by defeating Tony Mamaluke in a tournament. He was the awarded the championship on September 6, 2003, after Jeremy V was stripped of it, to begin his second reign. On March 26, 2005, he won the NWA Wildside Heavyweight Championship for the first time by defeating Ray Gordy and Onyx in a three-way match.

Kurgan

A kurgan (Russian: курга́н) is a tumulus, a type of burial mound or barrow, heaped over a burial chamber, often of wood. The Russian noun, which is already attested in Old East Slavic, is borrowed from an unidentified Turkic language, compare Modern Turkish kurğan, which means "fortress". These are mounds of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Associated with its use in Soviet archaeology, the word is now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology.

The earliest kurgans date to the 4th millennium BC in the Caucasus, and are associated with the Indo-Europeans. Kurgans were built in the Eneolithic, Bronze, Iron, Antiquity and Middle Ages, with ancient traditions still active in Southern Siberia and Central Asia. Kurgan cultures are divided archeologically into different sub-cultures, such as Timber Grave, Pit Grave, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnish and Kuman-Kipchak.

A plethora of placenames that include the word "kurgan" are located from Lake Baikal to the Black Sea.

Kurgan (disambiguation)

Kurgan is a tumulus or burial mound in Eurasia, but especially in Russia and Ukraine.

Kurgan may also refer to:

Kurgan hypothesis

The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory or Kurgan model) is the most widely accepted proposal of several solutions to explain the origins and spread of the Indo-European languages. It postulates that the people of an archaeological "Kurgan culture" in the Pontic steppe were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language. The term is derived from kurgan (курган), a Turkic loanword in Russian for a tumulus or burial mound.

The Kurgan hypothesis was first formulated in the 1950s by Marija Gimbutas, who used the term to group various cultures, including the Yamna, or Pit Grave, culture and its predecessors. David Anthony instead uses the core Yamna Culture and its relationship with other cultures as a point of reference.

Marija Gimbutas defined the "Kurgan culture" as composed of four successive periods, with the earliest (Kurgan I) including the Samara and Seroglazovo cultures of the Dnieper/Volga region in the Copper Age (early 4th millennium BC). The people of these cultures were nomadic pastoralists, who, according to the model, by the early 3rd millennium BC had expanded throughout the Pontic-Caspian steppe and into Eastern Europe.