Bless you, or God bless you, is a common English expression addressed to a person after they sneeze. The origin of the custom and its original purpose are unknown.

An alternative response to sneezing is the German word Gesundheit or Salud (meaning Health) in the Spanish language.

Several possible origins are commonly given. The practice of blessing someone who sneezes, dating as far back as at least AD 77, however, is far older than most specific explanations can account for.

One explanation holds that the custom originally began as an actual blessing. Gregory I became Pope in AD 590 as an outbreak of the bubonic plague was reaching Rome. In hopes of fighting off the disease, he ordered unending prayer and parades of chanters through the streets. At the time, sneezing was thought to be an early symptom of the plague. The blessing ("God bless you!") became a common effort to halt the disease.

A variant of the Pope Gregory I story places it with Pope Gregory VII, then tells the common story of "Ring Around the Rosey" being connected to the same plague.

Steven Eugene Grove (born November 27, 1962), better known as Euge Groove, is an American smooth jazz saxophonist with a strong Top-40 background.

Born in Hagerstown, Maryland, he graduated from the University of Miami School of Music in 1984. A rather late-bloomer in the genre, Grove did not record his first solo album until 2000. Prior to that, he had replaced Richard Elliot in the Tower of Power when Elliot decided to pursue a solo career, and he also did session work with various pop acts, most noticeably the Miami girl group Exposé. He has a sax solo on their #1 hit "Seasons Change," and another on their 1993 hit "I'll Never Get Over You (Getting Over Me)."

Grove adopted the name Euge Groove, which consists of a shortening of his middle name and a very frequent mispronunciation of his last. While initially it was presumed to be coined by fans who saw him perform in Europe, Grove later indicated in an interview on XM Radio during the summer of 2006 that his mother-in-law conceived the idea for his stage name.

John Milford Rutter CBE (born (1945-09-24)24 September 1945) is a British composer, conductor, editor, arranger and record producer, mainly of choral music.

Born in London, Rutter was educated at Highgate School, where a fellow pupil was John Tavener. He read music at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the choir. He served as director of music at Clare College from 1975 to 1979 and led the choir to international prominence.

In 1974, Rutter visited the United States at the invitation of choral musician Melvin (Mel) Olson and conducted the premiere of his cantata "Gloria" in Omaha, Nebraska, in the Witherspoon Hall of Joslyn Art Museum. The composition, commissioned by Olson's Voices of Mel Olson chorale, has become a much-performed favourite over the years.^{[citation needed]}

In 1981 Rutter founded his own choir, the Cambridge Singers, which he conducts and with which he has made many recordings of sacred choral repertoire (including his own works), particularly under his own label Collegium Records. He resides at Duxford in Cambridgeshire and frequently conducts many choirs and orchestras around the world.

Cody Chesnutt (stylized as Cody ChesnuTT, born 1968) is an American R&B and neo soul musician from Atlanta, Georgia.

Chesnutt's music blends elements of rock, funk, soul, hip hop, and blues. After relocating to Los Angelos, Chesnutt found work with Death Row records, writing and producing five songs for the male R&B group Six Feet Deep. Chesnutt and his former band, The Crosswalk, had a brief stint with Hollywood Records in which they were later booted from the label. The band subsequently broke up and Chesnutt released a double LP in 2002 entitled The Headphone Masterpiece, which was recorded on a 4-track cassette recorder in his bedroom recording studio, which he calls "The Sonic Promiseland".

His closest brush with mainstream success came in 2002, when the hip hop group The Roots remade a song from his album, "The Seed", for their album Phrenology, as "The Seed (2.0)". Chesnutt plays guitar and sings vocals on the track, and appears in its music video, which received heavy airplay on MTV and BET. At the height of his popularity, Chesnutt's backing band consisted of drummer Craig Waters, now with the band The Bellrays, and bassist Aaron Ebensperger. In October 2003, Cody Chesnutt was nominated for the prestigious Shortlist Music Prize, and performed in the ceremony for the prize at the Wiltern Theatre in California.

Tim Hawkins is a Christian comedian,songwriter, and singer, best known for parodying popular songs, such as Carrie Underwood's "Jesus Take The Wheel" and "The Candy Man" stand-up material based on marriage, homeschooling and parenting. Hawkins has released three CDs and five DVDs of his material since 2006. In 2007, Hawkins began to release his comedy on the Internet, with his videos gaining more than 50 million views on YouTube and Facebook since.

Hawkins has four children, and a wife who is winning a battle with breast cancer, which Hawkins often alludes to during a serious portion of his stand-up show. When he does this he asks the audience to pray for them. He played outfield in college for the University of Missouri.