Peter Shukoff

Peter Alexis Shukoff (born August 15, 1979), also known as Nice Peter, is an American comedian, musician and personality. A self-described "Comic/Guitar Hero," he is best known for the comedy on his YouTube channel, NicePeter, especially the comedic series Epic Rap Battles of History. As of September 6, 2013, NicePeter has over 2.4 million YouTube subscribers. The day after hitting one million subscribers, the video game channel G4 crowned Nice Peter the King of Dot Comedy on Attack of the Show. His two channels, Nice Peter and Epic Rap Battles have a total of 12 million subscribers and over a billion views as of September 2013. He also has a third channel that he uses for vlogs and "Monday Shows", a show that he uploads on either Mondays or Tuesdays that he shows a couple different segments including "Viewer Mail", "Twitter Question Time", and "Ask a Giraffe". They have been featured on the Huffington Post,Billboard.com, and the January 2012 issue of Wired. An interview with Forbes details Peter and his partner Lloyd Ahlquist's rise to fame.

Nice

Nice (/ˈniːs/, French pronunciation: ​[nis]; Niçard Occitan: Niça [classical norm] or Nissa [nonstandard], Italian: Nizza or Nizza Marittima, Greek: Νίκαια, Latin: Nicaea) is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, and it is the capital of the Alpes Maritimes département. The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of about 1 million on an area of 721 km² (278 sq mi). Located in the Côte d'Azur area on the south east coast of France on the Mediterranean Sea, Nice is the second-largest French city on the Mediterranean coast and the second-largest city in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region after Marseille. Nice is about 8 miles (13 km) from the principality of Monaco, and its airport is a gateway to the principality as well.

The city is called Nice la Belle (Nissa La Bella in Niçard), which means Nice the Beautiful, which is also the title of the unofficial anthem of Nice, written by Menica Rondelly in 1912.

Peter

Peter often is used to refer to Saint Peter, a disciple of Jesus Christ. It can also refer to many other people, of which only a few are listed here. This page only lists people commonly referred to as "Peter" and nothing else; for others, please see List of people named Peter.

People

Given name

Religion

Other people

Surname

Other uses

Epic Rap Battles of History

Epic Rap Battles of History is a YouTube video series created by Peter Shukoff (a.k.a. Nice Peter) and Lloyd Ahlquist (a.k.a. EpicLLOYD). The series pits famous historical and pop culture figures, real and fictional, against one another in a rap battle format. As of December 2015, it is the 18th most subscribed channel on YouTube with over 12.9 million subscribers and over 2.7 billion total video views.

Although early episodes of the series featured only Nice Peter and EpicLLOYD, later episodes have regularly featured guest appearances from other internet celebrities such as Lisa Donovan, Timothy DeLaGhetto, George Watsky, DeStorm Power, Jesse Wellens, Jenna Marbles, Ray William Johnson, Rhett and Link, and Smosh. Media celebrities like rappers Snoop Dogg and Chali 2na, parody artist "Weird Al" Yankovic, and the comedian duo Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele have also appeared in the series.

On July 3, 2013, Epic Rap Battle of History's Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney became the first of its singles to be certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States. Nine other singles, including Darth Vader vs. Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking, Dr. Seuss vs Shakespeare, Master Chief vs Leonidas, Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates, Justin Bieber vs Beethoven, Mario Bros. vs Wright Bros., Mr T vs Mr Rogers, and Abe Lincoln vs Chuck Norris were subsequently also certified Gold.

Yule log

The Yule log, Yule clog, or Christmas block is a specially selected log burnt on a hearth as a Christmas tradition in a number of countries in Europe. The origin of the folk custom is unclear. Numerous scholars have observed that, like other traditions associated with Yule (such as the Yule boar), the custom may ultimately derive from Germanic paganism.

Origins

According to the Encyclopedia of English Folklore, the first "clear" references to the tradition appear in the 17th century, and thus it is unclear where or when the custom extends.

However, it has long been observed that the custom may have much earlier origins, possibly extending from or echoing customs observed in Germanic paganism. As early as 1725, Henry Bourne sought an origin for the Yule log in Anglo-Saxon paganism:

More recently, G. R. Willey (1983) says:

The events of Yule are generally held to have centred on Midwinter (although specific dating is a matter of debate), and feasting, drinking, and sacrifice (blót) were involved. Scholar Rudolf Simek comments that the pagan Yule feast "had a pronounced religious character" and comments that "it is uncertain whether the Germanic Yule feast still had a function in the cult of the dead and in the veneration of the ancestors, a function which the mid-winter sacrifice certainly held for the West European Stone and Bronze Ages." The traditions of the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar (Sonargöltr) still reflected in the Christmas ham, Yule singing, and others stem from Yule customs, and customs which Simek takes as "indicat[ing] the significance of the feast in pre-Christian times."