John Mills

Sir John Mills was an English actor, who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.

Mills was born at the Watts Naval School in North Elmham, Norfolk, England, and grew up in Felixstowe, Suffolk. He was educated at Norwich High School for Boys (which since its move after World War II to Langley Park, Loddon, is known as Langley School), where it is said that his initials can still be seen carved into the brickwork on the side of the building in Upper St Giles Street. He made his acting debut on the stage of the Sir John Leman School in Beccles in a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream when he played the part of Puck.

Mills took an early interest in acting, making his professional debut at the London Hippodrome in The Five O'Clock Girl in 1929. He also starred in the Noel Coward revue Words and Music. He made his film debut in The Midshipmaid (1932), and appeared as Colley in the 1939 film version of Goodbye, Mr Chips, opposite Robert Donat.

Mills joined-up in September 1939 at the start of World War II, and was posted into the Royal Artillery. He was later commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, and was discharged in 1941 due to medical reasons. He starred in his friend Noel Coward's In Which We Serve.

He took the lead in Great Expectations in 1946, and subsequently made his career playing traditionally British heroes such as Captain Robert Falcon Scott in Scott of the Antarctic (1948). Over the next decade he became particularly associated with war dramas, such as The Colditz Story (1954), Above Us the Waves (1955) and Ice Cold in Alex (1958). He often acted in the roles of people who are not at all exceptional, but become heroes due to their common sense, generosity and right judgement. Altogether he appeared in over 120 films.

For his role as the village idiot in Ryan's Daughter (1970) — a complete departure from his usual style — Mills won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His most famous television role was probably as the title character in Quatermass for ITV in 1979. Also on the small screen, in 1974 he starred as Captain Tommy "The Elephant" Devon in the six-part television drama series The Zoo Gang, about a group of former underground freedom fighters from World War II, with Brian Keith, Lilli Palmer, and Barry Morse.

He also starred as Gus the Theatre Cat in the filmed version of the musical Cats in 1998.

In 2002 Mills released his extensive home movie footage in a documentary/film entitled John Mills' Moving Memories, with interviews with Mills, his children Hayley, Juliet and Jonathon and Richard Attenborough. The film was directed and edited by Marcus Dillistone, and features behind the scenes footage and stories from films such as Ice Cold in Alex and Dunkirk. In addition the film also includes home footage of many of John Mills' friends and fellow cast members including Sir Laurence Olivier, Harry Andrews, Walt Disney, David Niven, Dirk Bogarde, Rex Harrison, Tyrone Power.

He was appointed a CBE in 1960. In 1976 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

In 2002, he received a Fellowship of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), the highest award given by the Academy, and was named a Disney Legend by The Walt Disney Company.

In the years leading up to his death, he appeared on television only on special occasions, his sight having failed almost completely in 1992. After that, his film roles were brief but notable cameos.

He died aged 97 on 23 April 2005 in Chiltern, Buckinghamshire, following a chest infection. A few months after Sir John's death, Mary Hayley Bell died on 1 December 2005.

Alessandro Corsellini

Alessandro Corsellini, a third generation pipe maker and smoker, started his pipe smoking career at the age of 17. Later, and in 1965, he founded Italy's first and oldest pipe club, "Club della Pipa" (Club of the Pipe), and a year later, he resumed his family's pipe smoking tradition. As a smoker, Alessandro is very well known not only in Italy, but also in Europe and in the world at large for his many achievement and world records in pipe smoking contests. He took part in his first pipe smoking contest in 1967, and in 1969 and 1972 he came out the winner of the European Championship. In in fact, in his first such event of 1969 he set an astounding world record, with a time of 3 hours, 3 minutes and 45 second; that was the first time someone managed to keep his three grams of tobacco lit and going beyond the 3-hour barrier. From 1972 to 1998, Alessandro won the Italian Championship 6 times, and his club team won it 12 times, from 1970 to 2000. His club team won the World Championship in 1985 (Paris), 1989 (Turin), 1997 (Budapest), and 1999 (Brno). Alessandro's hobby of the heart remains pipe making and smoking. He has a wide collection of pipes, and he still prefers natural, English mixtures, with Latakia. Besides pipes, he collects antique pocket watches and motorcycles. He loves animals very much and seizes every possible opportunity to enjoy nature and its charm. Such activities are best enjoyed in the company of his wife, two children and his grandson.

Yul Brynner

Yul Brynner was a Russian-born actor of stage and film, best known for his portrayal of the King of Siam in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical The King and I on both stage and screen, as well as Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film The Ten Commandments and as Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven.

He was noted for his deep, rich voice and for his shaven head, which he kept as a personal trademark after adopting it in his role in The King and I.

He was born Yuliy Borisovich Brynner in Vladivostok, Far Eastern Republic. His father, Boris Brynner, was a mining engineer of Swiss and Mongolian ancestry and his mother Marusya was a housewife.

Brynner exaggerated his background and early life for the press, claiming that he was born Taidje Khan of part-Mongol parentage, on the Russian island of Sakhalin. A biography published by his son Rock Brynner in 1989 clarified these issues.

He claimed to be a quarter Romany and in 1983 was elected to the position of Honorary President of the Roma, an office that he kept until he died. He also infrequently referred to himself as Julius Briner. In addition to his work as a performer, Brynner was an active photographer, and wrote two books.

After Boris Brynner abandoned his family, his mother took Yul and his sister, Vera Bryner, to Harbin, China, where they attended a school run by the YMCA, and in 1934 she took them to Paris.

During World War II, Brynner worked as a French speaking radio announcer and commentator for the U.S. Office of War Information, broadcasting propaganda to occupied France.

Brynner's best-known role was that of King Mongkut of Siam in the Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I which he played 4,626 times on stage over the span of his career. He appeared in the original production and subsequent touring productions, as well as a 1977 Broadway revival, and another Broadway revival in 1985. He also appeared in the film version for which he won an Academy Award as Best Actor, and in a short-lived TV version (Anna and the King) on CBS in 1972. Brynner is one of only nine people who have won both a Tony Award and an Academy Award for the same role.

He made an immediate impact upon launching his film career in 1956, appearing not only in The King and I that year, but also in major roles in The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston and Anastasia with Ingrid Bergman. Brynner, at 5'10", was reportedly concerned about being overshadowed by Charlton Heston's physical presence in the film The Ten Commandments and prepared with an intensive weight-lifting program.

He later starred in such films as the Biblical epic Solomon and Sheba (1959), The Magnificent Seven (1960), and Kings of the Sun (1963). He co-starred with Marlon Brando in Morituri; Katharine Hepburn in The Madwoman of Chaillot and William Shatner in a film version of The Brothers Karamazov (1958). He starred with Barbara Bouchet in Death Rage, 1976. Among his final feature film appearances were in Michael Crichton's Westworld (1973) and its sequel Futureworld (1976). Brynner also appeared in drag in an unbilled role in the Peter Sellers comedy The Magic Christian (1969).

In addition to his work as a performer, Brynner was an active photographer, and wrote two books. His daughter Victoria put together Yul Brynner: Photographer a collection of his photographs of family, friends, and fellow actors, as well as those he took while serving as a UN special consultant on refugees. Brynner wrote Bring Forth the Children: A Journey to the Forgotten People of Europe and the Middle East (1960) and The Yul Brynner Cookbook: Food Fit for the King and You.

A student of music from childhood, Brynner was an accomplished guitarist and singer. In his early period in Europe he often played and sang gypsy songs in Parisian nightclubs with Aliosha Dimitrievitch. He sang some of those same songs in the film The Brothers Karamazov. In 1967, he and Dimitrievitch released a record album, The Gypsy and I: Yul Brynner Sings Gypsy Songs.


Brynner died of lung cancer on October 10, 1985 in New York City.

Knowing he was dying of cancer, Brynner starred in a run of farewell performances of his most famous role, The King and I, on Broadway from January 7 to June 30, 1985, opposite Mary Beth Peil. He received the 1985 Special Tony award honoring his 4,525 performances in The King and I.

Throughout his life, Brynner was often seen with a cigarette in his hand. In January 1985, nine months before his death, he gave an interview on Good Morning America, expressing his desire to make an anti-smoking commercial. A clip from that interview was made into just such a public service announcement by the American Cancer Society, and released after his death; it includes the warning "Now that I'm gone, I tell you, don't smoke." This advertisement is now featured in the Body Worlds exhibition.

Donald Findlay

Donald Findlay is a well-known senior advocate and Queen's Counsel in Scotland. He has also held positions as a vice chairman of Rangers Football Club and twice Rector of the University of St Andrews.

He is well known for a distinctive style of dress and manner, particularly the smoking of a pipe, as well as his staunch support for Unionism in Scotland and the Conservative Party.

Donald Findlay was born on the March 17, 1951 in Cowdenbeath, Fife. He was subsequently educated at Harris Academy in Dundee, and later at the University of Dundee and at the University of Glasgow. His academic links with the University of St Andrews (of which Dundee was once part) saw him elected as Lord Rector in 1993 and again in 1996. After his retirement from this position, he took the position of Chancellor of the University's Strafford Club.

A combination of high-profile controversies, acute legal skills and a well-cultivated image has generated Findlay a lot of coverage in the Scottish press in recent years and he now has one of the highest legal profiles in Scotland and widely considered to be Scotland's premier criminal law advocate. He took silk, becoming a Queen's Counsel in 1988, but his behavior has been censured by the Faculty of Advocates on more than one occasion. He has served as a defense lawyer in many high-profile murder cases including Jodi Jones, Mark Scott and the Kriss Donald murder trials. He represented Peter Tobin, the murderer of Angelika Kluk in the so-called "body in the church" case.

He is also a noted after-dinner speaker and in 1997 was a high profile campaigner on behalf of the Think Twice campaign which supported a double-no vote in the Scottish devolution referendum.

Alan Christopher Deere

Alan Christopher "Al" Deere was a New Zealand Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain and author of Nine Lives.

Deere was born in Westport but his family moved to Wanganui where he grew up in a semi-rural environment and attended Marist Brothers' School and Wanganui Technical College. At the age of eight he saw an aircraft fly overhead and sprinted to see it land on a nearby beach. The pilot allowed him to sit in the cockpit and Deere determined to become a pilot.

After a school career dominated by success in sports, representing his school in rugby, cricket and boxing, Deere spent two years as a law clerk. Encouraged by his family doctor to follow his chosen career, Deere persuaded his mother to sign the under 21 application for entry into the Royal Air Force. He passed selection under Wing Commander R A Cochrane in April 1937 and sailed for England on the Rangitane in September, but was admitted to hospital with high blood pressure.

Deere began flying training on 28 October 1937, at the De Havilland Flying School at White Waltham, the No 13 Elementary and Reserve Flying Training School.

On 9 January 1938 he was granted a short service commission as acting Flying Officer and started initial officer training at RAF Uxbridge. He was selected for the RAF boxing team to tour South Africa, but flight training took priority and he was posted to 6 Flight Training School on 22 January. The aircraft he was to have travelled in crashed at Bulawayo with the loss of all on board.

Deere was promoted to Flying Officer on 28 October, and temporarily posted to No. 74 Squadron RAF on 20 August, before joining No. 54 Squadron RAF in September where he was joined by Colin Gray, who was to become New Zealand's top scoring pilot of World War II. Both squadrons operated Gloster Gladiators, the RAF's last biplane fighter.

Until May 1940, the squadron remained in England, tasked with home defense, having converted to Supermarine Spitfire Mk 1s at the beginning of 1940. Deere was enraptured of the Spitfire, like most pilots, describing it as "the most beautiful and easy aircraft to fly." He was later given a chance to fly a captured Bf 109, and found the Spitfire superior:

"In my written report on the combat I stated that in my opinion the Spitfire was superior overall to the Me 109, except in the initial climb and dive; however this was an opinion contrary to the belief of the so-called experts. Their judgement was of course based on intelligence assessments and the performance of the 109 in combat with the Hurricane in France. In fact, the Hurricane, though vastly more manoeuvrable than either the Spitfire or the Me 109, was so sadly lacking in speed and rate of climb, that its too-short combat experience against the 109 was not a valid yardstick for comparison. The Spitfire, however, possessed these two attributes to such a degree that, coupled with a better rate of turn than the Me 109, it had the edge overall in combat. There may have been scepticism by some about my claim for the Spitfire, but I had no doubts on the score; nor did my fellow pilots in 54 Squadron",(the Bf109 was called Me 109 by contemporary Allied pilots).

On 23 May 1940, during the closing phases of the Battle of France, Deere and Pilot Officer J. Allen flew Spitfires escorting Flight Lieutenant James Leathart across the channel in a Miles Magister to rescue 74 Squadron’s commanding officer, who had made a forced landing. In sight of Leathart and White, Deere claimed his first combat victories, shooting down two Messerschmitt Bf 109s. Later the same day he shot down a third Bf 109.

On 24 May he added a Bf 110 over Dunkirk and on the 26th claimed two more in the same area.

On 28 May Deere was shot down by a Dornier Do17 he was attacking near Dunkirk. He was knocked unconscious when making a forced landing on a Belgian beach. Rescued by a soldier, Deere made his way on foot to Oost-Dunkerke where his head injuries were dressed. He hitched a ride on a British Army lorry to Dunkirk, and (after receiving some criticism from soldiers about the effectiveness of the RAF’s fighter cover), boarded a boat to Dover from where he took a train back to London, 19 hours after taking off from Hornchurch with his squadron.

Together with Leathart and Allen, Deere was awarded the DFC on 12 June 1940. The medal was presented at Hornchurch by King George VI on 27 June. The Citation read:

"During May, 1940, this officer has, in company with his squadron, taken part in numerous offensive patrols over Northern France, and has been engaged in seven combats often against superior numbers of the enemy. In the course of these engagements he has personally shot down five enemy aircraft and assisted in the destruction of others. On one occasion, in company with a second aircraft, he escorted a trainer aircraft to Calais Marck aerodrome, for the purpose of rescuing a squadron commander who had been shot down there. The trainer aircraft was attacked by twelve Messerschmitt 109s whilst taking off at Calais, but Pilot Officer Deere, with the other pilot, immediately attacked, with the result that three enemy aircraft were shot down, and a further three severely damaged. Throughout these engagements this officer has displayed courage and determination in his attacks on the enemy." London Gazette – 14 June 1940.

No 54 Squadron took part in the defense of channel shipping against Luftwaffe attacks designed to draw out and destroy Fighter Command.

On 9 July Deere shot down a Bf 109 over the channel, but then collided head on with a Bf 109 of 4 Staffel Jagdgeschwader 51 flown by Oberfeldwebel Johann Illner. The propeller blades of Deere's spitfire "Kiwi" were bent backwards, the engine disabled, and much of the fin and rudder lost. Nevertheless, he managed to glide back to the coast near Manston where his forced landing in a paddock ended against a stone wall.

The colour scheme of this aircraft (P9398, KL-B, named, like all Deere's aircraft, "Kiwi"), was accurately recorded and in consequence it has been a favourite with modellers and manufacturers. The remains of this aircraft have recently been excavated and are to be rebuilt.

After Adler Tag on 11 August he shot down a Bf 109, two more plus a Bf 110 the next day, and on the 15th added another Bf 109 over the Channel. However he was then trapped in an unequal dogfight with Bf 109s which attempted to block his return to England. Deere made the coast but was forced to bail out at low altitude, and was admitted to Victoria Hospital with minor injuries. He discharged himself the following day. Deere was shot down again on the 28 August - this time by a Spitfire - but parachuted to safety. A frustrating combat on the 30th saw him claim a probable Do 17.

The following day the Luftwaffe raided Hornchurch. Deere led a section of three Spitfires which attempted to take off during the raid. A bomb destroyed all three aircraft. Deere's Spitfire was blown on its back, trapping him. Pilot Officer Eric Edsall, though badly injured when his own Spitfire had been destroyed, crawled to Deere’s aircraft and freed him. Seeing Edsall’s injuries, Deere then carried his rescuer to the sick bay.

Deere was critical of the lack of training given to new pilots:

"We were desperately short of pilots.[...] We were getting pilots who had not been on Spitfires because there were no conversion units at that time. They came straight to a squadron from their training establishments. Some of them did have a few hours on the Hurricanes, a monoplane experience, but not on the Spitfire. For example, we got two young New Zealanders into my flight. Chatting to them I found they'd been six weeks at sea coming over. They were trained on some very outdated aircraft, I can't remember, out in NZ. One of the pilots had taken them up to see the handling and brief them on the Spitfire. Then they'd go off for one solo flight and circuit, then they were into battle. The answer of course is that they didn't last. Those two lasted two trips and they both finished up in Dover hospital. One was pulled out of the Channel. One landed by parachute."
Such was the toll on men of 54 Squadron that on 3 September, before the peak of the battle, the squadron was withdrawn from 11 group and moved to the northern airfield at Catterick to rest and recover.

A Bar to his DFC was awarded on 6 September 1940. The Citation read:

"Since the outbreak of war this officer has personally destroyed eleven, and probably one other, enemy aircraft, and assisted in the destruction of two more. In addition to the skill and gallantry he has shown in leading his flight, and in many instances his squadron, Flight Lieutenant Deere has displayed conspicuous bravery and determination in pressing home his attacks against superior numbers of enemy aircraft, often pursuing them across the Channel in order to shoot them down. As a leader he shows outstanding dash and determination." London Gazette – 6 September 1940.

[edit] Squadron Leader, America
While training new replacement pilots in January 1941, Deere collided with one of them, losing most of his tail to the Sergeant pilot's propellor. When bailing out, Deere was trapped against part of his aircraft, and his damaged parachute failed to fully open. Deere landed in an area of open sewerage which broke much of his fall. As a result of this incident he was rested from active flying, but promoted to Acting Squadron Leader and tasked as Operations Room Controller at Catterick. An unusual honour was having his portrait painted by official war artist Cuthbert Orde that February.

On 7 May 1941 he was posted to Ayr as Flight Commander of No. 602 Squadron RAF. On 5 June he suffered engine failure over the North Sea and glided back to another forced landing on the coast, crawling out the small side door after the Spitfire flipped on to its back, destroying the canopy and temporarily trapping him. At the end of July he took over as Squadron commander of 602 Squadron, and on 1 August it moved back to Kenley. On the same day he shot down another Bf 109. On the 10th he was scrambled to investigate a single enemy aircraft flying westwards but could not locate the machine and abandoned the search after being told the aircraft had crashed near Glasgow, so missing the chance to shoot down Rudolf Hess' Bf 110. (See: Rudolf Hess landing for further details.)

In January 1942 he was sent on a lecturing and public relations trip to America teaching American pilots fighter tactics learnt in the Battle of Britain.

Deere returned to action on 1 May, taking command of a Royal Canadian Air Force squadron, No. 403 Squadron RCAF, at North Weald. In August he went on a course at RAF Staff College and was subsequently posted to Headquarters 13 Group on staff duties.

He engineered a return to operations, somewhat unofficially, as a supernumerary with No. 611 Squadron RAF at Biggin Hill. He shot down an Fw 190 soon after, but wrote of his great respect for the type and its pilots.

He was given command of the Kenley fighter wing, but this was changed at the last minute to keep him as Wing Leader at Biggin Hill. While there, Deere was awarded the DSO, the citation reading: "This officer has displayed exceptional qualities of skill, which have played a large part in the successes of formations he has led. His fearlessness, tenacity and unswerving devotion to duty have inspired all with whom he has flown. Wing Commander Deere has destroyed 18 enemy aircraft." London Gazette – 4 June 1943.

Deere led 121 sorties during his six months as Wing Leader, and added another four claims to his total.

On 15 September 1943 he went to Sutton Bridge to command the Fighter Wing of the Central Gunnery School. He received a staff job in March 1944 at 11 Group but at the request of General Valin, abandoned this to take commanded of the Free French fighter wing, leading it over the beaches on D-Day, and subsequently in its pilots' return to France. When the fighter wing moved further into Europe, he was posted to HQ 84 Group Control Centre as Wing Commander Plans until July 1945 when he became Station Commander at Biggin Hill. He was awarded the OBE on 1 June 1945.

At the end of the war Deere was given command of the Polish P-51 Mustang Wing at Andrews Field, Essex, presiding over its disbandment in October, before becoming Commanding Officer at Duxford. Deere received a permanent commission in August 1945, and was promoted to Squadron Leader on 26 March 1946. In 1947 he was on the staff of AHQ Malta, subsequently joining the headquarters of 61 group before becoming Operations Officer, North-Eastern Sector, RAF Linton-on-Ouse.

Alan Deere was promoted to Wing Commander on 1 July 1951, and became Commanding Officer of RAF North Weald the following year. In 1955 he was on the directing staff of the RAF Staff College. He was promoted to Group Captain on 1 January 1958. He was Aide-de-camp to the Queen in 1962, and was appointed Assistant Commandant of the RAF College in 1963. Promoted to Air Commodore on 1 July 1964, Deere took command of (East Anglian) Sector.

On 30 January 1965 he was given the signal honour of leading fellow Battle of Britain fighter pilots in the main funeral cortege for Winston Churchill. In 1966 he commanded No. 1 School of Technical Training at Halton. He was consulted for the movie "Battle of Britain".

Alan Deere retired from the Royal Air Force on 12 December 1977. He died on 21 September 1995 aged 77 years.

Dan Rowan

Daniel Hale “Dan” Rowan was an American comedian. He was featured in the television show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, where he played straight man to Dick Martin.

Born on a carnival train near the small town of Beggs, Oklahoma, under the name of “Daniel Hale David”, Rowan toured with his parents, Oscar and Nellie David, who performed a singing and dancing act with the carnival. He was orphaned at age 11, spent four traumatic years at the McClelland Home in Pueblo, Colorado, then was taken in by a foster family at age 16 and enrolled in Pueblo's Central High School.

After graduating from high school, he hitchhiked to Los Angeles, California, in 1940 and found a job in the mailroom at Paramount Pictures; quickly ingratiating himself with studio head Buddy DeSylva, a year later he became Paramount's youngest staff writer.

During World War II, Rowan served as a fighter pilot in the United States Army Air Forces. He flew Curtiss P-40s and scored two kills against Japanese aircraft before he was shot down and seriously wounded over New Guinea. His military awards and decorations include the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Medal, and the Purple Heart.

Dan Rowan and Dick Martin as caricatured for NBC by Sam BermanAfter his discharge, he returned to California where he teamed with Dick Martin and started a comedy night-club act. The team had appeared on television before, but it was not until the success of a summer special in 1967 that they found fame on Laugh-In.

Rowan retired and spent the remainder of his years between his residence in Florida and his barge in the canals of France. In his 40s he was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, which led him to becoming insulin dependent. He died of lymphatic cancer at the age of 65 in Siesta Key, Florida.

In 1986, a book of letters written between himself and author John D. MacDonald was published entitled A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald, 1967-1974.

Prince Rainier III of Monaco

Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, styled His Serene Highness The Sovereign Prince of Monaco, ruled the Principality of Monaco for more than 50 years, making him one of the longest ruling monarchs of the 20th century. Though he was best known outside of Europe for having married American actress Grace Kelly, he was also responsible for reforms to Monaco's constitution and for expanding the principality's economy beyond its traditional gambling base. Gambling accounts for approximately three percent of the nation's annual revenue today; when Rainier ascended the throne in 1949, it accounted for more than 95 percent.

Rainier III was of French, Mexican, Spanish, German, Scottish, English, Dutch, and Italian ancestry.

Through his great-grandmother Lady Mary Victoria Hamilton, who was briefly Princess of Monaco, he was a descendent of James IV of Scotland. His great-great-great-grandmother was Stéphanie de Beauharnais, the adopted daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte and later the Grand Duchess of Baden. Other ancestors include William Thomas Beckford, the scandalous 18th century English collector, tastemaker, writer, and eccentric.

Rainier was also a descendent of William the Silent of Orange-Nassau, the main leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish Empire and ancestor to the current Dutch Royal Family; Hortense Mancini, the Duchess of Mazarin and mistress of King Charles II of England; Gabrielle de Polignac, a favorite of Marie Antoinette; Joan of Kent, the first Princess of Wales; King Charles IX of Sweden; King Frederick II of Denmark and Norway; Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, Claude, Duke of Guise and Prince Thomas M. Marciano II of Genoa.

Rainier was born in Monaco, the only son of Prince Pierre of Monaco, Duke of Valentinois (né Count Pierre de Polignac) and his wife, Hereditary Princess Charlotte, Duchess of Valentinois. Born in Algeria, his mother was the only child of Prince Louis II and Marie Juliette Louvet; she was later legitimized through formal adoption and subsequently named heiress to the throne of Monaco. His father was a half-French, half-Mexican nobleman from Brittany who adopted his wife's surname, Grimaldi, upon marriage and was made a prince of Monaco by his father-in-law.

Rainier had one sibling, HSH Princess Antoinette, Baroness of Massy, an unpopular figure generally believed to be meddlesome enough regarding her children's place in the line of succession to have forced Princess Grace to demand that she leave the country.

Rainier was first sent to study at Summerfields School in St Leonards-on-Sea, England, and later at Stowe, a prestigious English public school in Buckinghamshire. From there, he went to the Institut Le Rosey in Rolle and Gstaad, Switzerland, before continuing to the University of Montpellier in France, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree, and finally to the Institut d'études politiques de Paris in Paris.

Rainier's maternal grandfather, Prince Louis II, had been a general in the French army during World War I. During World War II, Rainier served as an artillery officer in the army. As a second lieutenant, he fought so courageously during the German counter-offensive in Alsace that he won the Croix de Guerre and Bronze Star and was given the rank of Chevalier in the Legion of Honor.

On 9 May 1949, Rainier became the Sovereign Prince of Monaco on the death of Prince Louis II, his mother having renounced her rights to the throne in his favor in 1944.

After ascending the throne, Rainier worked assiduously to recoup Monaco's lustre, which had become tarnished through neglect (especially financial) and scandal (his mother, Princess Charlotte, took a noted jewel thief known as René the Walking Stick as her lover). According to numerous obituaries, the prince was faced upon his ascension with a treasury that was practically empty. The holder of 55 percent of the nation's reserves, the Societé Monégasque de Banques et de Métaux Précieux, was bankrupt. The small nation's traditional gambling clientele, largely European aristocrats, found themselves with reduced funds after World War II. Other gambling centers had opened to compete with Monaco, many of them successfully. To compensate for this loss of income, Rainier decided to promote Monaco as a tax haven, commercial center, real-estate development opportunity, and international tourist attraction. The early years of his reign saw the overweening involvement of the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, who took control of the Société des Bains de Mer and envisioned Monaco as solely a gambling resort. Prince Rainier regained control of the Société in 1964, effectively ensuring that his vision of Monaco would be implemented.

As Prince of Monaco, Rainier was also responsible for the principality's new constitution in 1962 which significantly reduced the power of the sovereign. (He suspended the previous Constitution in 1959, saying that it "has hindered the administrative and political life of the country.") The changes ended autocratic rule, placing power with the prince and a National Council of eighteen elected members.

At the time of his death, he was the world's second longest-serving head of state, ranking just below King Rama IX of Thailand. During the last two or three years of his life, Rainier was in the custom of asking his valet each morning, "Has Rama survived the night? Or did I just move up in the ranks?"

In the last three years of his life, Prince Rainier's health progressively declined. In early 2004 he was hospitalized for coronary problems. In October he was again in hospital with a lung infection. In November of that year, Prince Albert appeared on CNN's Larry King Live and told Larry King that his father was fine, though he was suffering from bronchitis. On 7 March 2005, he was again hospitalized with a lung infection. Rainier was moved to the hospital's intensive care unit on 22 March. One day later, on 23 March, it was announced he was on a ventilator, suffering from renal and heart failure. On 26 March the palace reported that despite intensive ongoing efforts to improve the prince's health, he was continuing to deteriorate; however, the following day, he was reported to be conscious, his heart and kidney conditions having stabilized. His prognosis remained "very reserved".

On 31 March 2005, following consultation with the Crown Council of Monaco, the Palais Princier announced that Rainier's son, Hereditary Prince Albert, Marquis des Baux, would take over the duties of his father as Regent since Rainier was no longer able to exercise his royal functions.

On 1 April 2005, the Palace announced that Rainier's doctors believe his chances of recovery were "slim"; on 6 April it announced that Prince Rainier had died in Monaco at 6:35 am local time at the age of 81. He was succeeded by his only son, who became Prince Albert II.

He was buried on 15 April 2005, beside his wife, Princess Grace, at the Saint Nicholas Cathedral, the resting place of previous sovereign princes of Monaco and several of their wives, and the place where Prince Rainier and Princess Grace had been married in 1956.

Lord Taylor of Gryfe

Thomas Johnston Taylor, businessman and public servant: born Glasgow 27 April 1912; President, Scottish Co-Operative Wholesale Society 1965-70; created 1968 Baron Taylor of Gryfe; Chairman, Forestry Commission 1970-76; Chairman, Scottish Railways Board 1971-80; chairman, Morgan Grenfell (Scotland) 1973-85; Chairman, Economic Forestry Group 1976-81; FRSE 1977; Chairman, Scottish Action on Dementia 1989-95; married 1943 Isobel Wands (two daughters); died St Andrews 13 July 2001.

From being a 14-year-old school leaver from Bellahouston Academy in Glasgow who had lost his father in France at the age of three in the First World War, to chairmanships of the Forestry Commission and the Scottish Railways Board and membership of the international board of Morgan Grenfell and House of Lords select committees, Tom Taylor's journey was one of constructive achievement. Having to earn a living at 14, he became an office boy in the Scottish Co-Operative Wholesale Society, then the biggest commercial organisation in Scotland; he was eventually to become its president.

When he was 20, in 1932, the SCWS, run by elders who really cared about their junior employees and their personal fulfilment, gave him a scholarship which entitled him to spend a year in Germany on the eve of Hitler's coming to power – and, crucially, to learn German.
He took an active part in the Independent Labour Party, being Jimmy Maxton's proverbial bag carrier, and, at the age of 22, got himself elected as a Glasgow City Councillor, fighting two parliamentary elections as an ILP candidate subsequently, in the second of which, in Edinburgh in 1942, he challenged the wartime consensus to allow the party which held the seat to choose a successor on the death of an incumbent, and was severely trounced.

A contact with Fenner Brockway led to a defining moment in Taylor's life. Brockway, who was Secretary of the Independent Labour Party, recalled in March 1938 that Taylor spoke German and knew Vienna. He pleaded with him to go to Austria to assist the illegal escape of a number of people whose lives were threatened. Having lived in Germany and witnessed the burning of homes and business premises of Jews and the beating up of innocent people in public by brown-shirted storm troopers wielding their truncheons, Taylor needed no convincing of the threat which now faced Austrian opponents of the German invaders.

His superiors in the SCWS were somewhat surprised when their clerk asked for his summer holiday in March to go to Austria but acquiesced, impressed by his idealism. There followed meetings in London with Brockway and in co-operation with exiles in Paris plans were prepared. Forged passports with photographs and signatures of the intended escapees were provided and hidden in Taylor's suitcase. He was given a list of names and telephone numbers of contacts in Vienna. He coded the information, having destroyed the numbers, by marking certain pages in a paperback, which he carried.

At the German-Austrian border he realised how dangerous his situation was. The train stopped – and the storm troopers questioned all passengers and searched some of the luggage. He was able to convince them that he was a harmless British tourist visiting Vienna.

The intended escapees were well-known socialist activists whose telephone numbers would certainly be under the surveillance of the Gestapo; his instructions were to contact intermediaries who had been alerted from Paris, were not suspect and would arrange a safe rendezvous. The meetings took place in a pub or café with friends sitting at a neighbouring table to prevent anyone overhearing the conversation and to warn of any Gestapo raid. Taylor would recall that whenever possible he had to use public telephone kiosks.

His first contact was a young American couple who were studying at the university. That worked well, but another was a doctor with a consulting room in the heart of Vienna. Taylor noted his consulting hours and presented himself as a patient. Announcing that he had come from "mutual friends in Paris", he waited for him to make the next move. The doctor, however, looked at Taylor blankly and said that he had no friends in Paris. He turned out to be a locum, the contact doctor being off for the day. Contact with the Jewish doctor to whom Taylor had been directed was established two days later.

One difficulty Taylor encountered was convincing individuals that they should grasp the opportunity to escape. Some had families who would be left behind. Others had become accustomed to the inefficiency of the existing Austrian dictatorship and did not realise the extent of the brutality of the Nazi regime. It was not unknown under Dollfuss for socialist sympathisers in the police to warn you beforehand in the event of any anticipated raid on your house. Taylor had to warn his friends that under Hitler it would be different.

After 10 days of nervous discussion and planning, eight refugees were on their way by separate routes and on different days. All the main railway stations were being watched by the Gestapo in Paris. Using an international timetable Taylor made plans to avoid them. The journey to the frontier would take several local trains; to avoid suspicion, each ticket was purchased for a relatively short journey.

All missions were successfully completed. Taylor told me of walking in the sunshine on a Sunday morning in Vienna, the beauty of the place shattered by the shouts of "Heil Hitler" and the sharp crash of the jackboots of storm troopers marching in a great Nazi parade. As he made his way out of town he caught a glimpse of Dr Goebbels in a restaurant.

The Second World War presented a considerable dilemma for Taylor – he hated Hitlerism but at the same time was associated with the ILP, which had a long pacifist tradition. He registered as a conscientious objector but took part in relief work in Europe as a member of the United Nations Relief and Reconstruction Administration (Unrra), where he was involved in the resettlement of refugees who wandered homeless in Europe in post-war reconstruction.

During his spell with Unrra, he lived in the United States and observed the changes that took place immediately after the war in modern supermarket retailing. On his return to Scotland, he tried to direct the Co-Operative movement of which, in 1965, he was to become President, to anticipate these dramatic changes. Unfortunately there was little response and he resigned from the service of the Co-Operative Society.

In 1963, on the recommendation of Willie Ross, the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Taylor was appointed by Sir Alec Douglas-Home as a Forestry Commissioner. The Forestry Commission had been instituted in 1919 to make good the timber shortages caused by the First World War, but over the 13 years in which Taylor was to serve – confirmed for a second term by Harold Wilson, anointed in 1970 as Chairman by a Labour government, and re-anointed by Ted Heath – came increasingly to recognise its recreational responsibilities.

Taylor worked at constructive bipartisan relations with politicians of different political hues. George Holmes, later to be Director-General, but, in Taylor's time, Research Director and Harvesting and Marketing Commissioner, recalls:
Tom was an extraordinary combination of a hard-headed businessman and a left-wing, socially aware, politician. He worked well with my predecessor as Director-General, the effective Aberdonian John Dickson, partly because he was a chairman who did not fuss. He was a great guy to have at the helm.

An enthusiast for the development of wood processing in Britain, he was proud to visit alongside MPs the Wiggins Teape Corpach development near Fort William. He had played a crucial part in persuading Willie Ross, now the Scottish Secretary, and Harold Wilson to siphon off significant public funds to the project, inaugurated in 1966. He was unapologetic in the 1980s when Corpach ceased to produce pulp, after being acquired by Finnish interests who preferred to produce newsprint in Finland.

As Chairman he was a believer in public access, caravan sites, and forest cabins – though less excited about nature conservation. His first years of chairmanship coincided with reviews of government policy and much cost-benefit analysis. Policies had to be tightened to provide returns on investment; and recreation facilities were subject always to the hot breath of the Treasury. Taylor has been criticised in retrospect for being too keen on what Marion Shoard in her seminal 1980 book The Theft of the Countryside called "the serried ranks of conifers" – an insufficient sensitivity to the claims of broad-leafed trees.

Much of his energy – it was formidable and elastic – was consumed with managing the upheaval of 1974 in which the headquarters of the Forestry Commission was moved by government diktat from London and Basingstoke to Edinburgh. Any such transfer is traumatic for key staff with mortgages and children at secondary school. Taylor won justified plaudits for kindness and good sense at this difficult time for those who worked in the senior echelons of the commission. He inspired loyalty.

Taylor served 10 years, too, on the board of British Rail, serving as Chairman of the Scottish Railways Board from 1971 to 1980, and before leaving warned the Government of the dangers of their proposed structure for the privatised industry. He took a lively interest in Scottish industrial and cultural affairs. He was a member of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, served on the board of Scottish Television and was Vice-Chairman of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre. The last 12 years of his business life were spent in the service of Morgan Grenfell, the leading London merchant bank; he was chairman of Morgan Grenfell (Scotland) and a member of their international board.

In the midst of all this activity he took an active part in the House of Lords, to which he was sent, as Lord Taylor of Gryfe, in 1968, concentrating on forestry, Scottish industry and foreign affairs. In 1977-79 he was one of the staunchest supporters of the Labour Vote No Campaign, which scuppered Scottish devolution. However, by 1995 he had changed his mind and he told the House of Lords on 4 July:
A great deal has been said about preserving the Union. The noble Viscount, Lord Weir, has painted a picture of decline and a slippery slope towards independence. I tell the House, that if we do not respond to the wishes of the Scottish people for an assembly, the descent into the demand for complete independence will grow and will not diminish. The people of Scotland will feel that they have a right to their own assembly. But if they are told that they cannot have it and that the English parliament has decided that they cannot have it, the reaction will be towards more extreme demands for independence than are involved in the document which Lord Ewing [of Kirkford] as Chairman of the Scottish Constitutional Convention has produced.
He left the Labour Party for the SDP in 1981 but returned in 1990.

Tom Taylor believed in the silent form of worship of the Quakers, sharing a belief in pacifism with his devoted wife Isobel, who regularly worshipped with him at the Friends Meeting House in Glasgow and subsequently in St Andrews.

by Tam Dalyell

John Friedlander

John Friedlander was a visual effects designer who worked on several different BBC productions, most notably Doctor Who. He created and designed many of the monsters and alien characters in the original series, such as the Ice Warriors, Sontarans, Zygrons, Ogrons, Draconians, Sea Devils and Wirrn.

José Manuel Lopes

José Manuel Lopes

Was born in Lisbon in 1954. A graduate of the Lisbon School of Journalism (Escola Superior de Meios de Conumicaçâo Social), he has been a professional journalist since 1982.

A pipe smoker and collector since he was 16 years old, he became a member of the Pipe Club of Portugal in 1995 and is currently its president. He is also Fellow Member of the International Academy of the Pipe, and regularly contributes to the verious areas of the media and to Internet discussion forums specialised in pipes and tobacco, particularly the weekly magasine of the Barcelona Pipa Club/Virtual Pipa Club and the Pipalista, Fumeurs de Pipes, Pipes.org and Alt.smokers.pipes groups. He attends international pipe exhibitions and is a frequent participant in meetings and national and international pipe smoking competitions.

Herschel Burke Gilbert

Herschel Burke Gilbert was a prolific composer of television and film theme songs, including the musical scores of Chuck Connors' The Rifleman, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater, Robert Taylor's The Detectives, Gene Barry's Burke's Law, and Bob Denver's Gilligan's Island. Gilbert once estimated that his compositions had been used in at least three thousand individual episodes of various television series.

Gilbert was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the age of nine, he began studying the violin in Shorewood in Milwaukee County. By the time he was fifteen, he had formed his own dance band. He attended Milwaukee State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and studied for four years, two undergraduate and two graduate, from 1939–1943 at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. After Juilliard, Gilbert won a music scholarship to the Berkshire Music Festival in Massachusetts, where he studied under Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein.

After a two-year stint with the Harry James band, as both viola player and arranger, brought him to Hollywood. He arranged and orchestrated for Dimitri Tiomkin on James Stewart's It's a Wonderful Life and Duel in the Sun (both 1946). He composed the scores for some three dozen films throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, including The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), Comanche (1956), Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957), and Sam Whiskey (1969).

Gilbert was nominated for three Academy Awards in consecutive years: the original score for The Thief (1952), his title tune for The Moon Is Blue (1953), and for his direction on Carmen Jones (1954). Gilbert assigned opera star Marilyn Horne her first professional job as the voice of Carmen. The Thief, a spy film starring Ray Milland, relied heavily on Gilbert's music because the picture lacked dialogue.

Gilbert was president of the Film Music Society, also known as the Society for the Preservation of Film Music, from 1989–1992. He also served on the society's board until his death. In 1998, Gilbert was presented the organization's "Film Music Preservation Award".

As music director for Dick Powell's Four Star Television, Gilbert also wrote themes for The Dick Powell Show, Robert Taylor's The Detectives, The Westerner starring Brian Keith, and the DuPont Show with Powell's wife, June Allyson. At Four Star, Gilbert supervised the music of an estimated 1,500 television program over a six-year period. Two of his The Dick Powell Show scores were nominated for music Emmy Awards. He also handled the composition for The Rogues and The Gertrude Berg Show. Gilbert also did the music for The Loretta Young Show on NBC. He produced a popular LP entitled Dick Powell Presents Themes from Four Star Television, one of the first television soundtrack albums to feature the actual music heard weekly on various series.

One of his last assignments at Four Star resulted in another memorable television theme: Burke's Law (1963–1966), with its breathy female voice and jazzy brass opening for the Rolls Royce-chauffeured police detective Amos Burke. (Ironically "Burke" was also Gilbert's middle name.) Gilbert thereafter did the theme songs for Gilligan's Island, a series about comical castaways, and Clint Eastwood's Rawhide, both on CBS. He went to Oklahoma City in 1964 to receive the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's "Western Heritage Award" for "Damon's Road", a two-part episode of Rawhide.

While in Europe in the early 1950s, Gilbert composed music libraries. Many of these works became the underscore of classic television programs, including The Adventures of Superman, M Squad starring Lee Marvin, Topper, Sky King, and Ramar of the Jungle. His association with producers Arthur Gardner, Jules Levy, and Arnold Laven led to his music for The Rifleman, which ran on ABC from 1958-1963. In addition to his famous theme, he wrote a library of dramatic music for The Rifleman, which was recorded in Munich, Germany.

Gilbert retired from television in 1966 to form Laurel Records, which eventually produced more than sixty LPs and nearly thirty CDs, mostly of contemporary American chamber music. Laurel became one of the nation's premier classical labels, acclaimed for its outstanding engineering.

In his last years, Gilbert was joined by his son, John Gilbert of Berkeley, to produce more than sixty LPs and twenty-eight CDs featuring the music of Ernest Bloch, Henri Lazarof, Paul Hindemith, David Baker, and Robert Muczynski.

Gilbert was heavily involved in civic affairs. Through his Rotary International chapters in both Hollywood and West Hollywood, he sponsored classical musical competitions for high school students. He was a strong supporter of the Boy Scouts of America.

Gilbert suffered a stroke on March 23, 2003. He died some three months later, at the age of eighty-five, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

Vasily Livanov

Vasily Borisovich Livanov is a notable Russian and Soviet film actor, screenwriter, voice actor and the only one to have been made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.

His father Boris Livanov was a prominent actor of the Moscow Art Theatre. Vasily was brought up in the artistic milieu, as many Soviet/Russian actors (such as Olga Knipper and Alla Tarasova) worked with his father and frequented the Livanov house.

Livanov graduated from the Vakhtangov Theatre school and started his film career in 1959. His breakthrough role came in the 1963 adaptation of Vasily Aksyonov's Colleagues, in which he co-starred with Vasily Lanovoy and Oleg Anofriev.

Livanov's rather erratic bohemian lifestyle derailed his film career. He made very few appearances in the movies produced in the late 1960s and 1970s, using his newly acquired hoarse voice to become the voice behind the famous Soviet cartoon characters – Karlsson-on-the-Roof and Crocodile Gena. His other major contribution to the Soyuzmultfilm cartoon industry was writing the modernized adaptation of Town Musicians of Bremen, which went on to become a cult Soviet cartoon film of the 1970s. He also wrote a few more animated films, e.g. The Blue Bird.

In the late 1970s and in the 1980s, Livanov returned to film stardom in what became the greatest success of his acting career: the role of Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles and other Holmes TV series directed by Igor Maslennikov. His other notable roles from the period included Tsar Nicholas I(1975) and Don Quixote(1997) .

Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels that were featured in Livanov's movies included: A Study In Scarlet, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, The Hound of the Baskervilles,The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, The Adventure of the Final Problem, The Adventure of the Empty House, A Scandal In Bohemia, The Sign of Four, The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, The Adventure of the Second Stain, The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans and His Last Bow. Those movies were filmed between 1979 and 1986, and the latter four stories formed the plot of a standalone big-screen feature titled The 20th Century Begins. Vasily Livanov played Sherlock Holmes and Vitaly Solomin played Doctor Watson.

The actors were cast for the roles according to the illustrations by Sidney Paget, a friend of Conan Doyle and the first illustrator of the book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - their appearance was close to this of the characters of Paget’s illustrations.

New Zealand Mint Ltd. issued a four-coin set to celebrate the 120th anniversary of Sherlock Holmes; the picture of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are easily recognizable as Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin.

Vasily Livanov is also the author of a number of stories, plays, fairy tales for children and memoirs (one of them a book about Boris Pasternak, who was a close friend of his father Boris Livanov).

He lives in Moscow.

Harold Sakata

Toshiyuki "Harold" Sakata was a Japanese American professional wrestler and film actor most famous for his role as the villain "Oddjob" in the James Bond film Goldfinger.

Toshiyuki Sakata was born on July 1, 1920 in Holualoa, Hawaii, of Japanese descent; when he moved to mainland America he began to go by the more Western name "Harold." At the age of eighteen, he only weighed 113 lb (51 kg) at a height of 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m). Wanting to "look as good as the other guys", he started lifting weights. He spent his early life training as a weightlifter and won a silver medal for the United States at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, lifting a total of 410 kg in the Heavyweight division. He also did a stint as a professional wrestler under the name Tosh Togo from the early 1950s until the early 1960s, becoming Canadian Tag Team Champion.

Bond producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli took notice of Sakata because his heavy build--he stood 5 ft 9 in and weighed 284 lb (129 kg)--which when coupled with his intimidating gaze, made him the perfect choice for the part of Oddjob. He had no acting background at all besides pro wrestling, but the film character was mute and required little theatrical skill. Before Sakata had secured the role of Oddjob, another former wrestler, British actor Milton Reid had auditioned for the role. In 1964 Reid challenged Sakata to a wrestling contest and whomever was the winner would be the deciding factor for who would get the role. But since Reid had been in Dr. No and his character killed off, the producers decided to go with Sakata and the wrestling match didn't take place.

As Oddjob, he was bodyguard to Bond villain Auric Goldfinger and his sharpened, steel-brimmed bowler hat became a famous and much-parodied trademark of the Bond series. He appeared in several other movies in similar roles and took on "Oddjob" as an informal middle name.

With time, Sakata's acting skills improved. He co-starred opposite William Shatner in the movie Impulse, in which he played the character Karate Pete. He also guest starred on a Gilligan's Island episode as Rory Calhoun's henchman.

He also appeared in a series of TV commercials for Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup in the 1970s. The ad showed Sakata demolishing his house and frightening his family as his cough spasms grow worse and worse. The ad premise was that a spoonful of Formula 44 would quiet the worst coughs. At the end of the commercial the house is in shambles but everyone is politely (and quietly) bowing to each other. He made an appearance on the Tonight Show on which he parodied the commercial by destroying Johnny Carson's set.

Sakata died on July 29, 1982 in Honolulu, Hawaii, of cancer.

Hans Selye

Hans Hugo Bruno Selye was a Canadian endocrinologist of Austro-Hungarian origin and Hungarian ethnicity. Selye did much important factual work on the hypothetical non-specific response of the organism to stressors. While he did not recognize all of the many aspects of glucocorticoids, Selye was aware of this response on their role. Some commentators considered him the first to demonstrate the existence of biological stress.

Selye was born Vienna, Austria-Hungary on 26 January 1907. He became a Doctor of Medicine and Chemistry in Prague in 1929, went to Johns Hopkins University on a Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship in 1931 and then went to McGill University in Montreal where he started researching the issue of stress in 1936. In 1945 he joined the Universite de Montreal where he had 40 assistants and worked with 15,000 lab animals. Kantha (1992), in a survey of an elite group of scientists who have authored over 1,000 research publications, identified Selye as one who had published 1,700 research papers, 15 monographs and 7 popular books. He died October 16, 1982 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Famous Quotes on Pipe Smoking

"There is no composing draught like the draught through the tube of a pipe."

~Captain Frederick Marryat~

I hated tobacco. I could have almost lent my support to any institution that had for its object the putting of tobacco smokers to death...I now feel that smoking in moderation is a comfortable and laudable practice, and is productive of good. There is no more harm in a pipe than in a cup of tea. You may poison yourself by drinking too much green tea, and kill yourself by eating too many beefsteaks. For my part, I consider that tobacco, in moderation, is a sweetener and equalizer of the temper.

~Thomas Henry Huxley~

"A pipe is the fountain of contemplation, the source of pleasure, the companion of the wise; and the man who smokes, thinks like a philosopher and acts like a Samaritan."
-Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton



"The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected..."
-William Makepeace Thackeray, from The Social Pipe

Banjo Paterson

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson was a famous Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson's more notable poems include "Waltzing Matilda", "The Man from Snowy River" and "Clancy of the Overflow".

Banjo Paterson was born at Narambla, near Orange, New South Wales, the eldest son of Andrew Bogle Paterson, a Scottish immigrant from Lanarkshire and Australian-born Rose Isabella Barton, related to future Prime Minister Edmund Barton. Paterson's family lived on the isolated Buckinbah Station until he was 5. When Paterson's uncle died, his family took over the uncle's farm in Illalong, near Yass, close to the main route between Melbourne and Sydney. Bullock teams, Cobb & Co. coaches and drovers were familiar sights to him. He also saw horsemen from the Murrumbidgee River area and Snowy Mountains country take part in picnic races and polo matches, which led to his fondness of horses and inspired his writings.

Paterson's early education came from a governess, but when he was able to ride a pony, he was taught at the bush school at Binalong. In 1874 Paterson was sent to Sydney Grammar School, performing well both as a student and a sportsman. At this time, he lived in a cottage called Rockend, in the suburb of Gladesville. The cottage is now listed on the Register of the National Estate. Matriculating at 16, he took up the role of an articled clerk in a law firm and on 28 August 1886 Paterson was admitted as a qualified solicitor.

In 25678, Paterson began submitting and having his poetry published in the Sydney edition of The Bulletin under the pseudonym of "The Banjo", the name of a favourite horse. Paterson, like The Bulletin, was an ardent nationalist, and in 1889 published a pamphlet, Australia for the Australians which told of his disdain for cheap labour and his admiration of hard work and the nationalist spirit. In 1890, The Banjo wrote "The Man from Snowy River", a poem which caught the heart of the nation, and in 1895 had a collection of his works published under that name. This book is the most sold collection of Australian Bush poetry and is still being reprinted today. Paterson also became a journalist, lawyer, jockey, soldier and a farmer.

On 8 April 1903 he married Alice Emily Walker in Tenterfield, New South Wales. Their first home was in Queen Street, Woollahra. The Patersons had two children, Grace (born in 1904) and Hugh (born in 1906).

Paterson became a war correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age during the Second Boer War, sailing for South Africa in October 1899. His graphic accounts of the surrender of Bloemfontein (the first correspondent to ride in), the capture of Pretoria and the relief of Kimberley attracted the attention of the press in Britain. He also was a correspondent during the Boxer Rebellion, where he met George "Chinese" Morrison and later wrote about his meeting. He was editor of the Sydney Evening News (1904-06) and of the Town and Country Journal (1907-08).

In World War I, Paterson failed to become a correspondent covering the fighting in Flanders, but did become an ambulance driver with the Australian Voluntary Hospital, Wimereux, France. He returned to Australia early in 1915 and, as an honorary vet, travelled on three voyages with horses to Africa, China and Egypt. He was commissioned in the 2nd Remount Unit, Australian Imperial Force on 18 October 1915.

Paterson died of a heart attack in Sydney on 5 February 1941.

Sir Walter Murdoch

Sir Walter Logie Forbes Murdoch was a prominent Australian academic and essayist famous for his intelligence, wit, and humanity. He was a Founding Professor of English and former Chancellor of University of Western Australia in Perth. Murdoch University, also in Perth is named after him. There is a walk dedicated to him on South Wing Level 2 of the Murdoch campus library.

Walter Murdoch was born on 17 September 1874 at Rosehearty to Rev. James Murdoch, minister of the Free Church of Scotland, and his wife Helen, née Garden, and he was the youngest of their 14 children. He spent his first decade at Rosehearty and in England and France, and Walter arrived with his family in Melbourne in 1884. He attended Camberwell Grammar School and Scotch College. At the University of Melbourne, as a member of Ormond College, he won first-class honors in logic and philosophy.

After teaching experience, country and suburban, to the end of 1903, Murdoch's academic career began with appointment as a Melbourne University assistant lecturer in English. This was in what had virtually become a combined department under the classics professor T. G. Tucker. Murdoch published his first essay, 'The new school of Australian poets', in 1899, and he continued writing for the Melbourne Argus, under the pen-name of 'Elzevir', in a column which appeared weekly from 1905 titled 'Books and Men'. On 22 December 1897 at Hawthorn, Melbourne, Murdoch had married Violet Catherine Hughston, a teacher.

1911 marked a turning-point in Murdoch's life. Passed over in favor of an overseas applicant, (Sir) Robert Wallace, for the re-created independent chair of English at Melbourne University, he spent the next year as a full-time member of the Argus's literary staff. He was then selected as a founding professor of the University of Western Australia, where in 1913 lectures began, and continued for many years, in tin sheds in the heart of Perth.

The literary and other friendships formed in Melbourne still exerted a strong nostalgic influence upon the middle-aged Murdoch. This has been established by his warmly sympathetic, but not uncritical, biographer John La Nauze; but the fact that he felt deeply his geographical and intellectual isolation in Perth was not evident to even his close associates there. Through the inter-war years, Murdoch broadened his influence upon Australian life—most noticeably within the western State but extending throughout the Commonwealth.

On the young campus he had a considerable following outside his own department and his immediate academic colleagues. In addition to the appeal of his wide-ranging and often informal literary lectures, of his sardonic wit and his ready debunking of the pompous and ultra-respectable, Murdoch was known for his help to students and junior colleagues in difficulties.

Sympathy for underdogs and a willingness to champion lost causes extended beyond Murdoch's academic environment. It colored his second major contribution to Western Australian life: his association with several other members of the foundation professoriate in building closer links between the university and the community. His most effective medium was the column he contributed to the 'Life and Letters' page of the West Australian on alternate Saturday mornings. Combined from 1933 with occasional day and evening talks on radio—he was to prove a very effective broadcaster—and appearances on public platforms, frequently in the chair, it brought Murdoch a wide and varied local following. Simple language, challenging titles, erudite literary allusions, subtle or open criticisms of popularly accepted practices or beliefs, served to attract, in his biographer's words, varying types of people 'who read him, all with interest, most with pleasure, some with disapproval, over many years'. 'No other writer in the history of Australian letters has built so wide a reputation on the basis of the essay as a form of communication.'

These essays should be judged in the first instance as part of the community activities of the University of Western Australia. They were directed at the widespread literate, but by no means academic, population of the still very isolated State. But Murdoch's audience did not stop there. Indeed, the 'Elzevir' articles had begun to reappear in the Argus in 1919, and the essays in varying forms found an all-Australian market when Murdoch succumbed to the persuasion of his flamboyant nephew Sir Keith Murdoch, and his writings were syndicated on the Melbourne Herald network. Walter Murdoch's essays came to be read by others, then and much later, through collection and book form, from Speaking Personally (1930) onward. Moreover, in old age, for nearly twenty years from 1945, he conducted a weekly 'Answers' column, 'little essays' on any and every question, syndicated throughout most States and New Zealand and read by a huge public.

It is perhaps fortunate that Murdoch did not in his best creative years allow himself the leisure to write more ambitious works than his essays and some early textbooks. What he described as his one 'real book', Alfred Deakin: A Sketch (1923), was the result of work done in a year's leave in and around Melbourne. It was not successful financially, or as an introduction either to a larger joint biography (later abandoned) or to La Nauze's definitive two-volume Alfred Deakin: a Biography (1965).

Murdoch's limited interest, in his middle and later years, in Australian writing has often been criticized. However, in 1918 he published the Oxford Book of Australasian Verse (revised, 1923, 1945) and in 1951, after many years delay, with Henrietta Drake-Brockman, Australian Short Stories which was much better received than the verse anthology.

In addition to his academic teaching and the benefits which the young university obtained from his extramural activities, Murdoch was to remain a member of its governing body after he resigned from his chair in 1939. Chancellor in 1943-48, he was appointed C.M.G. in 1939 and K.C.M.G. in 1964; the university awarded him an honorary D.Litt. in 1948. He had been president of the local League of Nations Union from its foundation in the early 1920s until 1936, was president of the Kindergarten Union in 1933-36, and supported movements for women's rights.

A depression at the time did not stop his actively opposing the idea of secession from the Commonwealth as a solution to Western Australia's economic ills. Much later, in 1950-51, he vehemently and stalwartly fought the attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

Though the last years of Murdoch's long life were spent more or less as a recluse, with increasing deafness and declining eyesight, he remained mentally alert to the end. In 1964 he paid the last of several visits to his beloved Italy. When in the month of his death he was given a bedside message from the premier that the State government was to name its second university after him, he was able to send an appreciative acceptance. He added, sotto voce, 'It had better be a good one!'

Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh or Ralegh, was a famed English writer, poet, soldier, courtier and explorer.

Raleigh was born to a Protestant family in Devon, the son of Walter Raleigh and Catherine Champernowne. Little is known for certain of his early life, though he spent some time in Ireland, in Killua Castle, Clonmellon, County Westmeath, taking part in the suppression of rebellions and participating in two infamous massacres at Rathlin Island and Smerwick, later becoming a landlord of lands confiscated from the Irish. He rose rapidly in Queen Elizabeth I's favour, being knighted in 1585, and was involved in the early English colonization of the New World in Virginia under a royal patent. In 1591 he secretly married Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, without requesting the Queen's permission, for which he and his wife were sent to the Tower of London. After his release, they retired to his estate at Sherborne, Dorset.

In 1594 Raleigh heard of a "City of Gold" in South America and sailed to find it, publishing an exaggerated account of his experiences in a book that contributed to the legend of El Dorado. After Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was again imprisoned in the Tower, this time for allegedly being involved in the Main Plot against King James I, who was not favorably disposed toward him. In 1616, however, he was released in order to conduct a second expedition in search of El Dorado. This was unsuccessful and the Spanish outpost at San Thomé was ransacked by men under his command. After his return to England he was arrested and, after a show trial held mainly to appease the Spanish after Raleigh's attack of San Thomé, he was beheaded at Whitehall.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stephen "Stevie" Ray Vaughan was an American blues-rock guitarist, whose broad appeal made him an influential electric blues guitarist. To date, a total of 18 albums of Vaughan's work have been released. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Stevie Ray Vaughan #7 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, and Classic Rock Magazine ranked him #3 in their list of the 100 Wildest Guitar Heroes in 2007.

Stephen Ray Vaughan was born to Martha and Jimmie Lee Vaughan at Methodist Hospital in Dallas, Texas on October 3, 1954, three years after his brother, Jimmie Vaughan. Stevie's father, whose nickname became "Big Jim", was an asbestos worker whose job carried the family to cities across Texas. Wherever there was an opening, the family would pack up and move to another city.

Big Jim and Martha loved to dance to Western Swing, and it was the boys' first exposure to music. The Texas Playboys, a country band, would hang out at the Vaughans' house often, playing dominoes with Big Jim. The Playboys would bring alcoholic beverages to the house and Stevie would sneak sips when nobody was looking. This started him on his addiction to alcohol.

When Jimmie broke his shoulder playing football when he was 12, family friend Michael Quinn gave him his first guitar. Soon after, Stevie got one of his own: a plastic Roy Rogers toy guitar from Sears, with only three strings. Stevie recalls that it also came with a set of blankets.

The boys, uninterested in taking formal guitar lessons, taught themselves to play by listening to records by Jimi Hendrix, The Yardbirds, and The Beatles, that Jimmie brought home. The brothers were also drawn to blues music and taught themselves the guitar techniques of blues guitarists like Albert and B.B. King, Otis Rush, and Buddy Guy.

At the age of 15, Jimmie was the lead guitarist in a local cover band called The Chessmen, and played gigs all over Texas. One day when bandmate Doyle Bramhall came to pick up Jimmie for a gig, he saw young Stevie playing along to Jeff's Boogie by The Yardbirds. Bramhall became the first to tell Stevie Ray Vaughan that he was actually good.

When he was 17, Vaughan got a tattoo of a peacock on his chest.[4] It was initially supposed to be much bigger, but realizing the pain of the process altered Stevie's body-art plans.

Stevie was playing in rock bands by age 12. His first recording was for a garage rock band called "A Cast of Thousands", and his style stood out. He had paying gigs when he entered high school: first with Jimmie's new band, Texas Storm, and then with his own group, Blackbird. Stevie would play late night sets at local bars.

Stevie's and Jimmie's focus on music caused their grades to drop. Their alarmed parents tried to intervene, but it was too late: in 1967, Jimmie moved in with Doyle. Stevie, left at home, decided to take a job washing dishes at the local Dairy Mart. Part of his job was to clean out the trash bin, which required standing on top of 55-gallon wooden-lidded barrels that were used for storing grease. One day the wooden lid broke on one of the barrels and Stevie fell up to his chest in grease--and was fired for breaking the lid. He decided that, rather than try to get another job like this, he would pursue his dream of being a guitar player like Albert King, his current favorite.

In early 1971, both Jimmie and Doyle grew tired of the fading music scene in Dallas and moved to Austin to give it another try. A year later, Stevie followed with his band, Blackbird. At 17 years old, he dropped out of high school during Christmas break and hit the road.

When he first came to Austin, Stevie and his band didn't have much money, so he would sleep on a barroom pool table, but he fit in with the more appreciative music scene on the east side of town. With blues clubs like the Soap Creek Saloon, Vulcan Gas Company, and Antone's, Stevie could trade licks with the blues masters he grew up listening to. Clifford Antone, one of the club owners, took notice and practically begged Albert King to let 17-year-old Stevie play guitar with him. After much convincing, he finally agreed--and was very impressed when he heard Stevie play his own licks.

Sharing riffs with these admired masters was Stevie's dream come true, making a career in Austin turned out to be tougher than he thought. In 1973, he joined a promising rock group called Krackerjack, which included future bassist Tommy Shannon, whom he met after a stint at a club in Dallas called "The Fog." Stevie quit when the leader decided they should wear makeup on stage. The next year, he was asked to join Marc Benno and the Nightcrawlers, a blues band that included singer Doyle Bramhall and future Bee Gees bassist Russ Powell. The Nightcrawlers drove from Texas to Los Angeles to record an album, but Benno's record label rejected the tapes, and Stevie traveled back to Texas.

In 1975, he hooked up with another popular Austin group, Paul Ray and the Cobras, a two-guitar band with Stevie in the background. After two years, they only had one single recorded, and Stevie grew frustrated and quit. He was still in the shadow of his big brother. Jimmie's new group, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, were the talk of Austin, and became the house band at Antone's. In late 1977, Stevie decided it was time to put together a band of his own called "Triple Threat," which included bass player, W.C. Clark, Freddie "Pharoah" Walden on drums, and singer Lou Ann Barton.

W.C. Clark left Triple Threat in mid-1978, and Stevie renamed the band "Double Trouble." He then asked drummer Chris Layton to join the band. After an embarrassing post-show incident with drunken Lou Ann, Stevie became the new lead singer and guitar player after he fired her. Around this time, he hired a management company called "Classic Management" that consisted of manager Chesley Milikin, and financial assistant, Frances Carr.

Stevie's drummer at the time, Chris Layton, stayed with him. After almost four years, Jackie Newhouse was dropped from the band in the spring of 1981, and bass player Tommy Shannon decided he wanted in. In turn, he was asked to join Double Trouble. The first show with the new trio format band was at Joe Ely's annual Texas Tornado Jam, a music festival featuring a host of local bands held at the Manor Downs Racetrack, just outside of Austin. The Fabulous Thunderbirds were after Stevie and Double Trouble.

Mick Jagger from The Rolling Stones saw a tape of the show and liked what he saw. He asked Stevie and his band to play a private party hosted by The Rolling Stones at the Danceteria club in New York. After the show, Mick and guitar player Keith Richards talked to the band about getting them a record deal. It never went through, however, and they went back to Texas.

Jerry Wexler, record executive from Atlantic Records, saw the band playing at a record release party for Lou Ann Barton's new position as singer for Roomful of Blues. He recommended that the band play the Montreux International Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Manager Chesley Milikin put in a call to Claude Nobs, the host of the Montreux Jazz Festival and would be the first unsigned act to perform at the festival.

The band was booked on a jazz acoustic night, a setup that involved an upright bass, piano, and generally soft music. The loud and powerful sound of Stevie and Double Trouble shocked the staid crowd. After a few songs, the gig seemed headed for disaster, as some of the audience members booed. Larry Graham, from Sly & The Family Stone was looking forward to an encore with the band, but unfortunately, it never happened.

As the band was backstage, devastated and disappointed, David Bowie and Jackson Browne, two celebrities in the audience approached them to say they had liked what they heard. Browne offered the band 72 hours of free studio time at his own studio in downtown Los Angeles. David Bowie also invited Stevie to play on his upcoming album, Let's Dance, co-produced by Nile Rodgers.

To be able to afford the gasoline to take them to Los Angeles, the band booked a small tour at various clubs like Fitzgerald's in Houston and The Continental Club in Austin. When they finally traveled to Los Angeles during Thanksgiving weekend in 1982, they recorded an album's worth of songs: eight songs the first day; two the next. The band then went back to Texas, where Stevie recorded the vocals at Riverside Sound in Austin.

By 1988, the band was ready to return to the recording studio. For the new record, they traveled to Memphis to record in Ardent Studios, a pro recording studio that has such clientele as ZZ Top, Tina Turner, and Led Zeppelin. Together, old friend Doyle Bramhall and Stevie began writing songs about walking the tightrope to recovery, including "Tightrope", "Wall of Denial", and "Crossfire". The album was named appropriately, "In Step", released on June 6, 1989. "Crossfire" reached the #1 position on the Mainstream Rock Charts. It was the only hit single that they ever had.

In the spring of 1990, Stevie and his brother recorded an album together, one that would feature the music they had grown up with. They recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis and was produced by Nile Rodgers. The brothers agreed to name it "Family Style". That summer, Stevie and Double Trouble went on tour with British soul singer Joe Cocker, touring places like Alaska and the Benson & Hedges Blues Festival.

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To complete the summer portion of the "In Step" tour, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble played two shows on August 25 & 26 at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, WI. The shows also featured Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, and Robert Cray with The Memphis Horns.

After Double Trouble's set at the final show, Vaughan originally planned to return to Chicago by car. Bass player Tommy Shannon and keyboardist Reese Wynans had already departed. The venue was difficult to reach via highway and Vaughan wanted to get back to Chicago to talk to his girlfriend, model Janna Lapidus, who was staying with him at the time.

Tour manager Skip Rickert had hired helicopters from Omni Flights to circumvent congested highway traffic. Most of the seats had already been reserved, but one was available. Vaughan took it.

The helicopters departed at 12:44 a.m. in thick fog. Just past the landing zone was a 200-foot hill. Vaughan's helicopter was piloted by Jeffrey Browne, who was unfamiliar with the flight pattern for exiting the area. He guided the helicopter to about half of the altitude needed to clear the hill before crashing into it. The force of the impact scattered the aircraft over a 200-foot area. The coroner's report stated that Vaughan died of severe loss of blood due to a force-of-impact rupture of the aorta.

Hussein bin Talal

Hussein bin Talal was the King of Jordan from the abdication of his father, King Talal, in 1952, until his death. Hussein guided his country in the context of the Cold War, and through four decades of Arab-Israeli conflict, balancing the pressures of Arab nationalism, the burdens of sheltering a large Palestinian refugee population, and the allure of Western-style development against the stark reality of Jordan's geographic location.

Hussein's family claims a line of descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad. "We are the family of the prophet and we are the oldest tribe in the Arab world", the king once said of his Hashemite ancestry.

Hussein was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria. He proceeded to Harrow School in England, where he befriended his cousin Faisal II of Iraq. He pursued further study at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

In 1952, Hussein bin Talal was named King of JordanOn July 20, 1951, Prince Hussein traveled to Jerusalem to perform Friday prayers with his grandfather, King Abdullah I. A Palestinian extremist, fearing the king might negotiate a peace with the newly-created state of Israel, opened fire on Abdullah and his grandson. Abdullah was killed, but the 15-year-old Hussein survived, and turned to pursue the gunman. The assailant turned his weapon on the young prince, who was saved when the bullet was deflected by a medal on his uniform given to him by his grandfather.

He was appointed Crown Prince of Jordan on September 9, 1951. Abdullah's eldest son, King Talal, was crowned King of Jordan, but within a year was forced to abdicate owing to his mental state (European and Arab doctors diagnosed schizophrenia). King Talal's son, Crown Prince Hussein, was proclaimed King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on August 11, 1952, succeeding at the age of 16; because this was under the legal age, he was enthroned a year later, on May 2, 1953.

In mid-1967, Jordan joined Egypt and Syria to fight Israel in the Six Day War. Jordan lost control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem and saw its military shattered, but Hussein shored up his support among the country's growing Palestinian population.
In September 1970, the king ordered the forcible expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which he considered to be attempting to foment a civil war, from the country.

The country also defied the West and the other allied leaders by refusing to side against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War — allegedly done for internal political reasons after the Ma'an uprising in 1988 that threatened the throne of the King — which alienated the kingdom from most of the Arab world.

In 1994 King Hussein concluded negotiations to end the official state of war with Israel resulting in the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace which he had begun negotiating in secret with the Israelis in the 1970s. King Hussein developed strong ties of friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, with whom he had negotiated the peace treaty. King Hussein gave a powerful speech at the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin:

The king wrote three books: Uneasy Lies the Head (1962), about his childhood and early years as king; My War With Israel (1969); and Mon Métier de Roi..

He died of complications related to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma on February 7, 1999. The King had been suffering from the disease for many years and had been treated at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, United States on a fairly regular basis.

Prince Bernhard

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands , Prince of Lippe-Biesterfeld, born Count Bernhard Leopold Friedrich Eberhard Julius Kurt Karl Gottfried Peter of Biesterfeld (later elevated thus to Prince of Lippe-Biesterfeld, was Prince Consort to the late Queen Juliana, and father of 6 children; one of them is the current monarch, Queen Beatrix.

Although his private life was rather controversial, Bernhard was generally regarded as a charming and popular figure by the majority of the Dutch for his performance as a pilot and activities as a liaison officer during World War II, his work during post-war reconstruction, and for assisting specific individuals. The German-born prince helped found the World Wildlife Fund (later renamed World Wide Fund for Nature), becoming its first president in 1961. He also established the 1001 Club: A Nature Trust in 1970 to fund the organization. He helped found the Rotary International and was one of two founders of the international Bilderberg Group, which meets yearly in order to discuss the future of the world and issues concerning Europe as it relates to corporate globalization.

Bernhard was born Count Bernhard Leopold Friedrich Eberhard Julius Kurt Karl Gottfried Peter of Biesterfeld in Jena, Germany, the elder son of Prince Bernhard of Lippe (younger brother of the reigning Prince of Lippe) and Baroness Armgard von Sierstorpff-Cramm. Because the marriage of his parents did not properly conform to the marriage laws of the House of Lippe and was therefore morganatic, Bernhard was born with the title of "Count" only. In 1916, the Reigning Prince of Lippe, Leopold IV, granted Bernhard the title of "Prince of Lippe-Biesterfeld".

After World War I, Bernhard's family lost their German principality and the revenue that had accompanied it. But the family was still wealthy and Bernhard spent his early years at Reckenwalde, the family's new estate in East Brandenburg thirty kilometers east of the Oder-river, (now the village of Wojnowo, Greater Poland Voivodeship in Poland), near the city of Züllichau (Sulechów). He received his early education at home. When he was twelve, he was sent to board at the gymnasium in Züllichau and several years later to board at a gymnasium in Berlin, from which he graduated in 1929.

Bernhard suffered from poor health as a boy. Doctors predicted that he would not live very long. This prediction might have been the key to Berhard's reckless driving and the risks that he took in the Second World War and thereafter. The prince wrecked several cars and planes in his lifetime.

Bernhard studied Law at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland and in Berlin, where he acquired a taste for fast cars, horse riding, and big-game hunting safaris. He was nearly killed in a boating accident and an airplane crash, and he suffered a broken neck and crushed ribs in a 160 km/h (100 mi/h) car crash in 1938.

Prince Bernhard began to make himself popular and trusted in the eyes of the Dutch people at the outset of World War II. During the German Invasion, the Prince, carrying a machine gun, organised the palace guards into a combat group and shot at German planes. The Royal Family fled the Netherlands and took refuge in England. Once safely there, Princess Juliana and the children then went on to Canada, where they remained until the end of the war.

In England, Prince Bernhard asked to work in British Intelligence but the War Admiralty, and later General Eisenhower's Allied Command offices, did not trust him sufficiently to allow him access to intelligence information. However, on the recommendation of Bernhard's ethnically-German friend and admirer, King George VI, he was later permitted to work in the war planning councils.

In 1940, flight Lieutenant Murray Payne instructed the prince to fly a Spitfire. The Prince made 1,000 flight-hours in a Spitfire with the RAF's 322 "Dutch" squadron wrecking two planes during landings. As "Wing Commander Gibbs(RAF)," Prince Bernhard flew over occupied Europe in a B-24 bomber attacking V-1 launch pads, he was in a B-25 Mitchell bomber bombing Pisa, over the Atlantic ocean bombing a submarine and in an L-5 reconnaissance plane over occupied Europe. Prince Bernhard was awarded the Dutch Flying Cross for his "ability and perseverance" (Dutch: "bekwaamheid en volharding"). (source: Interview with the Prince,1993, Henny Meyer, published in "Het Vliegerskruis" 1997)

In 1941, Prince Bernhard was given the honorary rank of wing commander in the Royal Air Force. He then trained as a pilot and gained his wings later that same year.

From 1942 to 1944, Bernhard flew as a pilot with the Royal Air Force. He also helped organise the Dutch resistance movement and acted as personal secretary for Queen Wilhelmina.

Queen Wilhelmina erased the word "honorary" (the exact words were " à la suite") in the decree that promoted Bernhard to General. In this unconstitutional manner, she gave this Royal Prince a position that was never intended by either Parliament or her ministers. The minister of defence did not choose to correct the Monarch and the Prince took a real and important role in the Dutch Armed forces.

By 1944, Prince Bernhard became Commander of the Dutch armed forces. After the liberation of the Netherlands, he returned with his family where he became active in the negotiations for the German surrender. He was present during the armistice negotiations and German surrender in Hotel de Wereld ("The World Hotel") in Wageningen in The Netherlands on 5 May 1945. The Prince was a genuine war hero in the eyes of most of the Dutch and even kept cordial relations with the communists who fought against the Nazis. In the post-war years the popular Prince earned respect for his hard work in helping to reinvigorate the economy of the Netherlands.

After the war, the position of Inspector General was created for the Prince. He was made a member of the board of supervisors of Fokker Aircraft, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and within a few years was invited to serve as an adviser or non-executive director of numerous corporations and institutions. There have been claims about KLM helping Nazis to leave Germany to Argentina in KLM flights, while he was on the board of the KLM. After a 1952 trip with Queen Juliana to the United States, Prince Bernhard was heralded by the media as a business ambassador extraordinaire for the Netherlands. With his global contacts, in May 1954, he was a key figure in organising a meeting at the Bilderberg Hotel in the Netherlands for the business elite and intellectuals of the Western World to discuss the economic problems in the face of the then growing threat from communism. As a result of the success of this first meeting, it became an annual affair known as the Bilderberg Group. The idea for the European Union, first proposed by Robert Schuman on 9 May 1950, was encouraged at Bilderberg.

Prince Bernhard was a very outspoken person, who often flouted protocol by making personal remarks on subjects about which he felt deeply. Almost until his last day he called for more recognition for the Polish WWII veterans, who played such an important role in the liberation of the Netherlands. It was only after his death that the Dutch government took the decision to publicly recognize the important role of the Polish army in the liberation of the Netherlands. On 31 May 2006 at the Binnenhof in The Hague, Her Majesty Queen Beatrix awarded the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade with the Order of William, the highest possible decoration for the armed forces.

Prince Bernard was a very close friend of president Juan Perón and his wife Eva from Argentina, even making a visit to them in Buenos Aires on 4 April 1951.

Prince Bernhard died of cancer at the age of 93 in a Utrecht hospital (the Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht - University of Utrecht Medical Centre) on 1 December 2004; until his death he suffered from malignant lung and intestinal tumours.

Sir Douglas Bader

Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader was a Royal Air Force fighter ace during the Second World War.

In 1928, Bader joined the RAF, but, on December 14, 1931 at Woodley airfield near Reading, lost both of his legs in an aircraft crash attempting a slow roll at very low level following jibes about him not wanting to perform aerobatics that day. Bader recovered, undertook refresher training, passed his check flights, and attempted to stay in the RAF but was retired for medical reasons on 30 April 1933. After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, he was drafted and he requested that he be assigned to the RAF. Posted to a fighter squadron in 1940 Bader scored his first kills during the Battle of France, over Dunkirk.

During the Battle of Britain Bader became a friend and supporter of Trafford Leigh-Mallory and his "Big Wing" experiments, which led him into conflict with Air Vice Marshal Keith Park. In 1941 Bader participated in fighter sweeps over Europe as the RAF adopted a more offensive stance, but in August 1941 he was forced to bail out over German-occupied France, was captured and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war. While a POW, Bader made as much trouble as possible, escaping in August 1942, only to be recaptured and sent to Colditz Castle, the camp for POWs who made repeated escape attempts. He also met and befriended Adolf Galland, a prominent German Ace, during his imprisonment. Liberated in April 1945, he requested a return to action but that request was denied. Douglas Bader ended the conflict with 22 aerial victories scored in the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire, and left the RAF for good in February 1946.

Bader was considered to be an inspirational British hero of the era. His brutally forthright, dogmatic and often highly opinionated views (especially against authority) coupled with his boundless energy and enthusiasm inspired adoration and frustration in equal measures with both his subordinates and peers.

In 1976 Bader was knighted for his services to disabled people.

On 4 June 1979 Bader flew for the last time as a pilot. He had recorded 5,744 hours and 25 minutes flying time. Adolf Galland followed Bader into retirement.

His workload was exhausting for a legless man with a worsening heart condition, and, after a London Guildhall dinner honouring the 90th birthday of the Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, Bader died of a heart attack on 5 September 1982 at the age of 72. Bader had previously suffered a "minor heart attack" three weeks earlier after a golf tournament in Ayrshire.

Jim Garrison

Earling Carothers "Jim" Garrison who changed his first name to Jim in the early 1960s was the Democratic District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Louisiana from 1962 to 1973. He is best known for his investigations into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK).

Garrison remains a controversial figure. Opinions differ as to whether he uncovered a conspiracy behind the John F. Kennedy assassination but was blocked from successful prosecution by a federal government cover up, whether he bungled his chance to uncover a conspiracy, or whether the entire case was an unproductive waste of resources.

Earling Carothers Garrison was born in Denison, Iowa. His family moved to New Orleans in his childhood, where he was reared by his divorced mother. He served in the U.S. National Guard in World War II, then got a law degree from Tulane University Law School in 1949. He worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for two years and then returned to active duty with the National Guard. After fifteen months, he was relieved from duty. One Army doctor concluded he had a "severe and disabling psychoneurosis" which "interfered with his social and professional adjustment to a marked degree. He is considered totally incapacitated from the standpoint of military duty and moderately incapacitated in civilian adaptability." As it turned out, Garrison was suffering from anxiety and exhaustion that was likely due to the fact that, during World War II, he had flown 35 dangerous reconnaissance missions over France and Germany. He had also witnessed the horrors of totalitarianism first-hand when his unit entered the Dachau concentration camp one day after its liberation. Although one doctor did recommend that Garrison be discharged from service and collect 10% permanent disability, Garrison would not hear of it. Instead he applied for the National Guard where his record was reviewed by the army surgeon general who “found him to be physically qualified for federal recognition in the national army.”

Garrison worked for New Orleans law firm Deutsch, Kerrigan & Stiles from 1954 to 1958, when he became an assistant district attorney. Garrison became a flamboyant, colorful, well-known figure in New Orleans, but was initially unsuccessful in his run for public office, losing a 1959 election for criminal court judge. In 1961 he ran for district attorney, winning against incumbent Richard Dowling by 6,000 votes in a five-man Democratic primary. Despite lack of major political backing, his performance in a televised debate and last minute television commercials are credited with his victory.

Once in office, Garrison cracked down on prostitution and the abuses of Bourbon Street bars and strip joints. He indicted Dowling and one of his assistants with criminal malfeasance, but the charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. Garrison did not appeal. Garrison received national attention for a series of vice raids in the French Quarter, staged sometimes on a nightly basis. Newspaper headlines in 1962 praised Garrison's efforts, "Quarter Crime Emergency Declared by Police, DA. — Garrison Back, Vows Vice Drive to Continue — 14 Arrested, 12 more nabbed in Vice Raids." Garrison's critics often point out that many of the arrests made by his office did not result in convictions, implying that he was in the habit of making arrests without evidence. However, assistant DA William Alford has said that charges would more often than not be reduced or dropped if a relative of someone charged gained Garrison’s ear. He had, said Alford, “a heart of gold.”

After a conflict with local criminal judges over his budget, he accused them of racketeering and conspiring against him. The eight judges charged him with misdemeanor criminal defamation, and Garrison was convicted in January 1963. (In 1965 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction and struck down the state statute as unconstitutional.) At the same time, Garrison indicted Judge Bernard Cocke with criminal malfeasance and, in two trials prosecuted by Garrison himself, Cocke was acquitted.

Garrison charged nine policemen with brutality, but dropped the charges two weeks later. At a press conference he accused the state parole board of accepting bribes, but could obtain no indictments. He accused the state legislature of the same, but held no investigation. He was unanimously censured by the legislature.

In 1965, running for reelection against Judge Malcolm O'Hara, Garrison won with 60 percent of the vote.

New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison began an investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy in the fall of 1966, after receiving several tips from Jack Martin that a man named David Ferrie may have been involved in the assassination. The end result of Garrison's investigation was the arrest and trial of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw. Garrison's key witness against Clay Shaw was Perry Russo, a twenty-five year old insurance salesman from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. During the trial, Russo testified that he had attended an "assassination party" at David Ferrie's apartment, where Shaw, Ferrie, and Lee Harvey Oswald had discussed killing President Kennedy.

Russo’s version of events has been questioned by some historians and researchers, such as Patricia Lambert, once it became known that part of his testimony was induced by hypnotism, and by the drug Sodium Pentothal (sometimes called "truth serum"). Indeed, the early version of Russo's testimony, as told in the DA memo, before he was subjected to Sodium Pentothal and hypnosis, fails to mention an "assassination party" and says that Russo met Clay Shaw on two occasions, neither of which occurred at the "party." However in Jim Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassins, he says Russo has already told of the party at David Ferrie's before any "truth serum" was admitted. The jury didn't see enough evidence to convict Shaw. A verdict of not guilty was given.

Garrison was able to subpoena the Zapruder film from Life magazine and show it to the public for the first time. Until the trial, the film had rarely been seen, and bootleg copies made by assassination investigators working with Garrison led to the film's wider distribution.

In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that Lee Harvey Oswald's stint in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol (C.A.P.) fit the timeline of David Ferrie's Civil Air Patrol service. Committee investigators also found six witnesses whose statements led them to believe that Oswald had been present at Civil Air Patrol meetings headed by David Ferrie.

In 1993, the PBS television program Frontline obtained a group photograph, taken eight years before the assassination that showed Oswald and Ferrie at a cookout with other Civil Air Patrol cadets. However, as Frontline executive producer Michael Sullivan said, "one should be cautious in ascribing its meaning. The photograph does give much support to the eyewitnesses who say they saw Ferrie and Oswald together in the C.A.P., and it makes Ferrie's denials that he ever knew Oswald less credible. But it does not prove that the two men were with each other in 1963, nor that they were involved in a conspiracy to kill the president." However, Ferrie flat out denied ever knowing Oswald or Shaw, despite several witnesses who claimed to see the three of them in much of 1963.

HSCA Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey wrote, in his book The Plot to Kill the President, that the Committee "...was inclined to believe that Oswald was in Clinton [Louisiana] in late August, early September 1963, and that he was in the company of David Ferrie, if not Clay Shaw" and that numerous witnesses in Clinton, Louisiana "...established an association of undetermined nature between Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald less than three months before the assassination."

In a 1992 interview, Edward Haggerty, who was the judge at the Clay Shaw trial, stated: "I believe he [Shaw] was lying to the jury. Of course, the jury probably believed him. But I think Shaw put a good con job on the jury."

In 1978, he was elected as a state Circuit Court of Appeals judge and served in this capacity until his death.

After the Shaw trial, Garrison wrote three books on the Kennedy assassination, A Heritage of Stone (1970), The Star Spangled Contract, and the best-seller, On The Trail of The Assassins (1988).

The 1991 Oliver Stone film JFK was largely based on Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassins as well as Jim Marrs' Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. Kevin Costner played a fictionalized version of Garrison in the movie. Garrison himself had a small on-screen role in the film and ironically as United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Garrison appeared as himself in the 1987 film The Big Easy starring Dennis Quaid

Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian theoretical physicist noted for his work on spin theory, and for the discovery of the exclusion principle underpinning the structure of matter and the whole of chemistry.

Pauli was born in Vienna to Wolfgang Joseph Pauli (né Wolf Pascheles) and Berta Camilla Schütz. His middle name was given in honor of his godfather, the physicist Ernst Mach. His paternal grandparents were from prominent Jewish families of Prague, but his father converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism shortly before his marriage in 1899. Bertha Schütz was raised in her mother's Roman Catholic religion, but her father was the Jewish writer Friedrich Schütz. Although Pauli was raised as a Roman Catholic, eventually he and his parents left the Church.

Pauli attended the Döblinger-Gymnasium in Vienna, graduating with distinction in 1918. Only two months after graduation, the young prodigy published his first paper, on Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. He attended the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, working under Arnold Sommerfeld, where he received his PhD in July 1921 for his thesis on the quantum theory of ionised molecular hydrogen.

Sommerfeld asked Pauli to review the theory of relativity for the Encyklopaedie der mathematischen Wissenschaften (Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences). Two months after receiving his doctorate, Pauli completed the article, which came to 237 pages. It was praised by Einstein; published as a monograph, it remains a standard reference on the subject to this day.

Pauli spent a year at the University of Göttingen as the assistant to Max Born, and the following year at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, which later became the Niels Bohr Institute in 1965. From 1923 to 1928, he was a lecturer at the University of Hamburg. During this period, Pauli was instrumental in the development of the modern theory of quantum mechanics. In particular, he formulated the exclusion principle and the theory of nonrelativistic spin.

At the beginning of 1931, shortly after his divorce and immediately following his postulation of the neutrino, Pauli had a severe breakdown. He consulted the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung who, like Pauli, lived near Zürich. Jung immediately began interpreting Pauli's deeply archetypal dreams, and Pauli became one of the depth psychologist’s best students. Soon, he began to criticize the epistemology of Jung’s theory scientifically, and this contributed to a certain clarification of the latter’s thoughts, especially about the concept of synchronicity. A great deal of these discussions is documented in the Pauli/Jung letters, today published as Atom and Archetype. Jung's elaborate analysis of more than 400 of Pauli's dreams is documented in Psychology and Alchemy.

In 1928, he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at ETH Zürich in Switzerland where he made significant scientific progress. He held visiting professorships at the University of Michigan in 1931, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1935. He was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1931.

The German annexation of Austria in 1938 made him a German national, which became a difficulty with the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Pauli moved to the United States in 1940, where he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton. After the war, in 1946, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States, before returning to Zürich, where he mostly remained for the rest of his life.

In 1945, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "decisive contribution through his discovery in 1925 of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or Pauli principle." He was nominated for the prize by Albert Einstein.

In 1958, Pauli was awarded the Max Planck medal. In that same year, he fell ill with pancreatic cancer. When his last assistant, Charles Enz, visited him at the Rotkreuz hospital in Zürich, Pauli asked him: “Did you see the room number?” It was number 137. Throughout his life, Pauli had been preoccupied with the question of why the fine structure constant, a dimensionless fundamental

László Péter

László Péter was Emeritus Professor of Hungarian History at the University of London. He completed his first degree at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest after which he worked as an archivist and teacher. He left Hungary in 1956, subsequently completing a DPhil in Oxford under the supervision of C.A. Macartney and John Plamenatz. In 1961, he was appointed to a lectureship at SSEES and to a full chair in 1990. He retired in 1994.

László Péter published extensively on the constitutional history of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy, mostly in the nineteenth century. He was an External Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of University College London.

During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Péter was appointed to the revolutionary committee charged with the supervision and cataloguing of the archives of the Ministry of the Interior.

Roman Bohnen

Roman Bohnen was a stage and film actor.

Born Roman Aloys Bohnen in St. Paul, Minnesota, Bohnen attended the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1923 with a B.A. He served his acting apprenticeship in theater companies in St. Paul and Chicago before making his Broadway debut in 1931 in As Husbands Go.

Between 1934 and 1940, he belonged to the Group Theatre and appeared in numerous plays. Incubator, which he co-wrote with John Lyman, was produced in 1932.

Bohnen's first film was the 1937 Vogues of 1938. By 1941, he was working almost exclusively in film. Among his better-known roles are Candy in Of Mice and Men (1939) and Pat Derry in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).

In The Beginning or the End Bohnen was cast as President Harry Truman. The MGM film was a docu-drama about the atomic bomb. The film was publicly released in 1947. After a private screening in late 1946, President Truman let it be known that he disapproved his portrayal regarding the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. On December 2, 1946, Bohnen wrote Truman that he should portray himself. On December 12, 1946, Truman responded to Bohnen's letter, but declined the chance to portray himself, and said that he was "sure you (Bohnen) will do the part creditably". Ultimately the scenes were re-shot with actor Art Baker re-cast as President Truman.

A co-founder of the politically active Actors Laboratory Theatre, he was working on its production of A Distant Isle when he collapsed and died in Hollywood, California in 1949. He was blacklisted before his death, and afterwards his name was mentioned in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Paul Goodman

Paul Goodman was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement. He is less remembered as a co-founder of Gestalt Therapy in the 1940s and '50s.

As a child, Goodman freely roamed the streets and public libraries of his native New York City, experiences which later inspired his radical concept of "the educative city". He graduated from The City College of New York in 1932 and completed his Ph.D. work at the University of Chicago in 1939. (He was not officially awarded his Ph.D. until 1953, for the dissertation which was later published by the University of Chicago as The Structure of Literature.)

Goodman was a prolific writer of essays, fiction and poetry. Although he had been writing short stories since 1932, his first novel, The Grand Piano, was published in 1942.

In the mid-1940s, together with C. Wright Mills, he contributed to Politics, the journal edited during the 1940s by Dwight Macdonald. In 1947, he published two books, Kafka's Prayer and Communitas, a classic study of urban design coauthored with his brother Percival Goodman. Fame came only with the 1960 publication of his Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System.

Goodman also knew and worked with other leading New York intellectuals, including Daniel Bell, Norman Mailer, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Norman Podhoretz, Mary McCarthy, Lionel Trilling, and Philip Rahv. As well as collaborating with Politics, his writings appeared in Partisan Review, The New Republic, Commentary, The New Leader, Dissent and The New York Review of Books.

Goodman was strongly influenced by Otto Rank's "here-and-now" approach to psychotherapy, fundamental to Gestalt therapy, as well as Rank's post-Freudian book Art and Artist (1932). In the late 1940s, Fritz Perls asked Goodman to write up the notes which were to become the seminal work for the new therapy, Part II of Perls, Goodman, and Hefferline (1951) Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. A year later, Goodman would become one of the Group of Seven - Fritz and Laura Perls, Isadore From, Goodman, Elliot Shapiro, Paul Weiss, Richard Kitzler - the founding members of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy.

Goodman wrote on a wide variety of subjects; including education, Gestalt Therapy, city life and urban design, children's rights, politics, literary criticism, and many more. In an interview with Studs Terkel, Goodman said "I might seem to have a number of divergent interests — community planning, psychotherapy, education, politics — but they are all one concern: how to make it possible to grow up as a human being into a culture without losing nature. I simply refuse to acknowledge that a sensible and honorable community does not exist."

He was equally at home with the avant-garde and with classical texts, and his fiction often mixes formal and experimental styles. The style and subject matter of Goodman's short stories influenced those of Guy Davenport.

In 1967, Goodman's son Matthew died in a mountain climbing accident. Paul's friends claimed that he never recovered from the resulting grief, and his health began to deteriorate. He died of a heart attack just before his 61st birthday

Floyd Thayer

Floyd G. Thayer was founder of the Thayer Magic Company that made magical apparatus in the 1920's and 1930's. The Thayer slogan was "Quality Magic".

Thayer started his Thayer Magic Co. making wands and advertised first in Mahatma as The Wand of The West. Ellis Stanyon was reported to have been his first customer.

In 1942, the Larsen’s purchased Floyd Thayer’s Magic Company. After his retirement, Thayer and his wife Jennie moved to the Larsen's home in Pasadena where they lived until Jennie's death in 1951. He then moved to Long Beach where he lived with cousin until his death.

David Bryant

David John Bryant is a former three-time World (outdoors) singles bowls champion in 1966, 1980 and 1988 and also a three-time World indoors singles champion in 1979, 1980 and 1981. He also won the Commonwealth Games singles bowls championship on 4 occasions in 1962, 1970, 1974 and 1978. No bowls competition was held in the 1966 Commonwealth Games.

In 1969 he was awarded the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for "services to bowls", and in 1980 he was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for again for "services to bowls".

Bryant also won the Middleton Cup on numerous occasions where among his Somerset team mates was former Scottish League internationalist footballer, Bobby Black.

'Jimmy' Greaves

James Peter 'Jimmy' Greaves is an English former football player, England's third highest goal scorer, and more recently a television pundit and is considered to be one of the finest goal scorers of his generation.

Greaves was a phenomenal striker, scoring on his debut for Chelsea in 1957. He finished as top League goal scorer twice whilst at Chelsea in 1959 and 1961 and his 41 league goals in the 1960-61 season remains a club record. Despite this, they never won any major trophies while he was playing for them.

In 1960 he became the youngest ever player to score 100 league goals in English football at the age of 20 years 290 days (and at 23 was the same age as Dixie Dean when he scored his 200th).

He briefly joined the Italian side A.C. Milan in 1961, after reportedly turning down a huge offer from Newcastle United and scored 9 goals in 12 games but failure to settle led to a quick departure. Bill Nicholson then signed him for Tottenham Hotspur for £99,999. The unusual fee was intended to relieve Greaves of the pressure of being the first £100,000 player.

Greaves enjoyed a legendary career at Tottenham. He played at Spurs from 1961 to 1970, scoring a club record of 266 goals in 379 matches, including 220 goals in the First Division. Greaves finished as top League goal scorer in four seasons (1963, 1964, 1965 and 1969), an achievement that established Greaves as arguably the most consistent striker in English football history. His record of finishing top goal scorer in six seasons has never been matched.

With Spurs, Greaves won the FA Cup in 1962 and 1967, scoring against Burnley in the former final. He also won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1963 - scoring twice in the famous 5-1 defeat of Atlético Madrid, ensuring that Spurs became the first British club to win a European trophy. Today he is considered one of the best players in the history of Tottenham Hotspur.

Greaves won his first England cap on May 17, 1959 against Peru, scoring England's only goal in a 4-1 defeat. He went on to play 57 times and score 44 goals, five fewer than Bobby Charlton but at a much higher rate. He remains third in the all-time list of England goal scorers, behind Charlton and Gary Lineker. Greaves also holds the record for most hat-tricks for England - six in all. At the 1961 British Home Championship, Greaves achieved the remarkable feat of scoring seven goals in three games as England won the title.

In the 1962 World Cup finals match against Brazil in Chile, a stray dog ran on to the pitch and evaded all of the players' efforts to catch it until Greaves got down on all fours to beckon the animal. Though successful in catching the dog, it proceeded to urinate all over Greaves' England shirt. The Brazilian player Garrincha thought the incident was so amusing that he took the dog home as a pet.

Greaves was the first-choice striker for the England team during the 1966 World Cup but suffered a leg injury during a game against France and had to be replaced. That replacement, Geoff Hurst, scored the winner in the quarter final against Argentina and kept his place all the way to the final, famously scoring a hat-trick as England won the tournament.

One of football's most famous photographs shows the elation on the England bench as the final whistle was blown, except for Greaves, in his suit and tie, looking astonished at what had happened. Greaves has always maintained that he felt nothing but delight at England's win and celebrated as much as the other non-playing members of the squad. He also maintains that he never felt he had a divine right to be in the side once he regained his fitness. However, his reaction at the time of England's success became well-documented - he packed his bags and headed on holiday with his wife while the rest of the squad attended an official banquet.

Greaves played only three more times for England after the 1966 World Cup, scoring a single goal. His final cap came against Austria in May, 1967.

In November 2007 it was announced that Greaves, along with the other 10 reserves from the 1966 squad, will be awarded medals by FIFA.

In 1970, Greaves joined West Ham United. He scored on his debut, (as he had for every team he played for, including England at full and under 21 level), with two goals against Manchester City on March 21. Two months later, on May 28, he finished sixth in the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally with co-driver Tony Fall. He retired in 1971 having played 516 Football League games and netted 357 goals, an all-time record for the top flight.

Greaves made a comeback at the age of 38, playing for Barnet in the then Southern League, playing from midfield he netted 25 goals and was their player of the season. He then went on to make several appearances for semi-professional side Woodford Town before retiring.

In the mid-1970s Greaves battled a well-documented alcohol problem, finally quitting drinking in February 1978. He became a popular television presenter and football pundit, striking up a memorable partnership with Ian St. John. Together they hosted a popular Saturday lunchtime football show called Saint and Greavsie from 1985 until the programme was axed in 1992.

Greaves also worked frequently for TV-am as a TV critic and was resident team captain on ITV sports quiz Sporting Triangles as well as co-hosting the popular Saturday morning kids TV show, The Saturday Show. He briefly had his own talk show and has been a columnist for The Sun newspaper for many years. He also answered readers letters in Shoot magazine in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2002 Greaves was made an Inaugural Inductee to the English Football Hall of Fame. He released his autobiography, Greavsie, in 2003 and is in demand as an after-dinner speaker. Greavsie has written 18 books in partnership with his life-long friend, the journalist and author Norman Giller.

Sir James Galway

Sir James Galway is a Northern Ireland–born virtuoso flutist from Belfast, nicknamed "The Man With the Golden Flute". Following in the footsteps of Jean-Pierre Rampal, he became one of the first flute players to establish an international career as a soloist.

James Galway studied at the Royal College of Music under John Francis and then at the Guildhall School of Music under Geoffrey Gilbert. He then studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Gaston Crunelle and Jean-Pierre Rampal and also privately with Marcel Moyse.

After his education time he spent 15 years as an orchestral player. He played with Sadler's Wells Opera, Covent Garden Opera, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He auditioned for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan, and was principal flute of that orchestra from 1969 to 1975.

In addition to his performances of the standard classical repertoire, he features contemporary music in his programs, including new flute works commissioned by and for him by composers including David Amram, Malcolm Arnold, William Bolcom, John Corigliano, Dave Heath, Lowell Liebermann and Joaquín Rodrigo. The album "In Ireland" by "James Galway and the Chieftains" reached number 32 in the UK album charts in 1987.

He is Principal Guest Conductor of the London Mozart Players, based at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, South London.

Most recently, Galway has performed for the Academy Award-winning ensemble recording the soundtracks of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy, composed by Howard Shore.

In June 2008, Galway was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame along with Liza Minnelli and B. B. King.

He currently performs on Nagahara flutes, as well as some Muramatsu Flutes.

Magnús Magnússon

Magnús Magnússon was an Icelandic television presenter, journalist, translator and writer. He was born in Iceland but lived in Scotland for nearly all of his life, although he never took British citizenship. He came to fame as presenter of the BBC television quiz programme Mastermind, which he hosted for 25 years.

Magnússon was born in Reykjavík but grew up in Edinburgh, where his father, Sigursteinn Magnússon, was the Icelandic consul. Under Icelandic naming conventions, his name would have been Magnús Sigursteinsson (Magnús, son of Sigursteinn), but his family adopted British naming conventions and used his father's patronymic. He was schooled at the Edinburgh Academy.

After graduating from Jesus College, Oxford, Magnússon became a reporter with the Scottish Daily Express and The Scotsman. He went freelance in 1967, then joined the BBC, presenting programmes on history and archeology as well as appearing in news programmes. He was Lord Rector of Edinburgh University from 1975 to 1978, and later became Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University.

Magnússon presented the long-running quiz show Mastermind from 1972 to 1997. The popularity of the show made him one of the best-known faces of the BBC. His famous catchphrase, which the current presenter John Humphrys has continued to use, was "I've started so I'll finish".

Magnússon made a one-off cameo appearance as himself, hosting Mastermind in the children's series Dizzy Heights.

Magnússon translated a variety of books from modern Icelandic and Old Norse into English. Among these are several works by Halldór Laxness, the Nobel prize-winning novelist from Iceland, and a number of Norse sagas which he co-translated (with Hermann Pálsson) for the Penguin Classics series: Njal's Saga (1960), The Vinland Sagas (1965), King Harald's Saga (1966) and Laxdaela Saga (1969). Magnússon was also the author of a popular history of the Viking era, called The Vikings (revised edition, 2000).

Magnússon was awarded an honorary knighthood (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1989, and was elected President of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for a five-year period, at their 94th AGM in October 1995, succeeding Max Nicholson. He also became the founder Chairman of Scottish Natural Heritage upon its inception in 1992.

In 2002 he became Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University.

In the early years of the 21st century, Magnússon also wrote for the New Statesman.

On 12 October 2006, his 77th birthday, Magnússon was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Magnússon mordantly noted that "this has to be one of my worst birthdays ever". His condition meant he was forced to cancel a string of public appearances. He died on 7 January 2007.

Sir John Harvey-Jones

Sir John Harvey-Jones was chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries from 1982 to 1987. He may have been best-known for his BBC television show, Troubleshooter, in which he advised struggling businesses.

Harvey-Jones was born in Hackney, London; but spent most of his early childhood in Dhar, India, where his father was a guardian to a teenage Maharajah. He was shipped back to Britain at age 6 to attend a prep school at Deal, Kent, where he suffered bullying and was desperately unhappy. He entered Dartmouth Royal Naval College at age 13.

Harvey-Jones joined Dartmouth Royal Naval College as a cadet in 1937, and in 1940, at the age of 16, he joined HMS Diomede as a midshipman. The next two ships that he served with, HMS Ithuriel and HMS Quentin were both sunk by enemy action. Harvey-Jones went on to join the submarine service in 1942 and received his first command at age 24.

With the end of World War II, Harvey-Jones went to the University of Cambridge to study Russian in six months and joined Naval Intelligence as an interpreter. He married Mary Bignell in 1947, and he commanded the Russian intelligence section under the guise of the "British Baltic Fishery Protection Service," which used two ex-German Schnellboots for gathering clandestine intelligence on the Soviet Baltic Fleet. Rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander, Harvey-Jones was awarded a military MBE in 1952 for his work in Naval Intelligence.

Refused permission by the Royal Navy to spend more time with his wife and daughter Gaby, who had contracted polio, he resigned his commission in 1956 and joined Imperial Chemical Industries on Teesside as a junior training manager. In 1973, at age 49, he was promoted to sit on the main board of directors. In April 1982, he became Chairman of ICI reputedly at the odds of 15-1 against, only the second split-career man and non-chemist to reach the top.

Mentored in part by John Adair, Harvey-Jones saw his responsibilities to both stockholders and employees as "making a profit out of the markets where the market is." He maintained a firm belief in "speed rather than direction", on the assumption that "once travelling a company can veer and tack towards the ultimate objective." Thus, at the business level he cut non-profit making and what he saw as non-core businesses, so that at board level he could concentrate on putting more power in fewer hands "to reduce the number of those who can say 'no' and increase the motivation of those who can say 'yes'", maintaining that "there are no bad troops, only bad leaders". After only thirty months in the job, having cut the UK workforce by one third, he had doubled the price of ICI shares and turned a loss into a one billion pound profit.

Despite his public loathing of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he accepted her offer of a knighthood for services to industry in 1985. He was voted Industrialist of the Year in 1988 for the third consecutive year and also became honorary vice-president of the Institute of Marketing. He served as chairman of The Economist from 1989 to 1994.

It was the BBC's Troubleshooter series, first broadcast in 1990, that made Harvey-Jones, according to one newspaper, the most famous industrialist since Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It ran to five series and several specials in the 1990s and also won him a BAFTA award.

Having lived most of his post-retirement period in Hay-on-Wye, he died in his sleep after a long illness, aged 83, at the Hereford County Hospital.

Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalized British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He is most notable for his Roman Catholic faith, which had an impact on most of his writing.

Recent biographies of Belloc have been written by A. N. Wilson and Joseph Pearce.

Belloc was born in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France (next to Versailles and near Paris) to a French father and English mother, and grew up in England. Much of his boyhood was spent in Slindon West Sussex, for which he often felt homesick in later life. This is evidenced in poems such as, "West Sussex Drinking Song", "The South Country", and even the more melancholy, "Ha'nacker Hill".

His mother Elizabeth Rayner Parkes (1829–1925) was also a writer, and a great-granddaughter of the English chemist Joseph Priestley. In 1867 she married attorney Louis Belloc, son of the French painter Jean-Hilaire Belloc. In 1872, five years after they wed, Louis died, but not before being wiped out financially in a stock market crash. The young widow then brought her son Hilaire, along with his sister, Marie, back to England where he remained, except for his voluntary enlistment as a young man in the French artillery.

After being educated at John Henry Newman's Oratory School Belloc served his term of military service, as a French citizen, with an artillery regiment near Toul in 1891. He was powerfully built, with great stamina, and walked extensively in Britain and Europe. While courting his future wife Elodie, whom he first met in 1890, the impecunious Belloc walked a good part of the way from the midwest of the United States to her home in northern California, paying for lodging at remote farm houses and ranches by sketching the owners and reciting poetry.

After his military service, Belloc proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, as a History scholar. He went on to obtain first class honours in History, and never lost his love for Balliol, as is illustrated by his verse, "Balliol made me, Balliol fed me/ Whatever I had she gave me again".

In the early 1930s, he was given an old Jersey pilot cutter called 'Jersey'. He sailed this for some years around the coasts of England, with the help of younger men. One of whom, Dermod MacCarthy, wrote a book about his time on the water with Belloc, called Sailing with Mr Belloc.

An 1895 graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, Belloc was a noted figure within the University, being President of the Oxford Union, the undergraduate debating society. He went into politics after he became a naturalised British citizen. A great disappointment in his life was his failure to gain a fellowship at All Souls College in Oxford. This failure may have been caused in part by his producing a small statue of the Virgin and placing it before him on the table during the interview for the fellowship.

From 1906 to 1910 he was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Salford South, but swiftly became disillusioned with party politics. During one campaign speech he was asked by a heckler if he was a "papist." Retrieving his rosary from his pocket he responded, "Sir, so far as possible I hear Mass each day and I go to my knees and tell these beads each night. If that offends you, then I pray God may spare me the indignity of representing you in Parliament." The crowd cheered and Belloc won the election.

Belloc wrote on myriad subjects, from warfare to poetry and many topics current in his day. He was closely associated with G. K. Chesterton; George Bernard Shaw coined the term Chesterbelloc for their partnership.

His only period of steady employment was from 1914 to 1920 as editor of Land and Water, a journal devoted to the progress of the war. Otherwise he lived by his pen, and often fell short of money.

He was the brother of the novelist Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes. In 1896, he married Elodie Hogan, an American. They had five children before her 1914 death from influenza. His son Louis was killed in World War I. He suffered a stroke in 1941, and never recovered from its effects. He lived quietly at home in Guildford, England, until his death on 16 July 1953.

George Butterworth

George Sainton Kaye Butterworth was an English composer best known for his tone poem The Banks of Green Willow and his settings of A. E. Housman's poems.

Although Butterworth was born in London, his family moved to Yorkshire not long after his birth. He received his first music lessons from his mother, who was a singer, and began composing at an early age. However, his father intended for him to be a solicitor, and he attended Eton College, from there continuing on to Trinity College, Oxford. While at Trinity he became more focused on music, for there he met the folk song collector Cecil Sharp and composer and folk song enthusiast Ralph Vaughan Williams. Butterworth and Vaughan Williams made several trips into the English countryside to collect folk songs, and both saw their compositions strongly influenced by what they heard. Butterworth was also an expert folk dancer, being particularly fond of Morris dancing.

Vaughan Williams and Butterworth became close friends. It was Butterworth who suggested to Vaughan Williams that he turn a symphonic poem he was working on into his London Symphony. When the manuscript for that piece was lost (having been sent to Fritz Busch in Germany just before the outbreak of war) Butterworth, together with Geoffrey Toye and the critic Edward J. Dent, helped Vaughan Williams reconstruct the work. Vaughan Williams dedicated the piece to Butterworth's memory after his death. Upon leaving Oxford, Butterworth began a career in music, writing criticism for The Times, composing, and teaching at Radley College, Oxfordshire. He also briefly studied at the Royal College of Music where he worked with Hubert Parry among others.

At the outbreak of World War I, Butterworth signed up for service in the British Army. He served in the Durham Light Infantry as a lieutenant in the 13th Battalion. Butterworth's letters are full of admiration for the ordinary miners of County Durham who served in his platoon. As part of 23rd Division the 13th DLI was sent into action to capture the western approaches of the village of Contalmaison on the Somme. Butterworth and his men succeeded in capturing a series of trenches, the traces of which can still be found within a small wood. For this action Lt George Butterworth, 31, was recommended for the Military Cross by Brigadier Page-Croft, who described him as: A brilliant musician in times of war and an equally brilliant soldier in times of stress. It is interesting to note that Ralph Vaughan Williams was serving as an ambulanceman nearby during this time.

The Somme Battle was now entering its most intense phase and on 4 August 23rd Division was ordered to attack a communication trench known as Munster Alley. The soldiers named the assault trench 'Butterworth Trench' in their Officer's honour. In desperate fighting 4/5 August Butterworth and his miners captured and held on to Munster Alley albeit with heavy loss. That night amid the frantic German attempts to recapture the position, George Butterworth, the most promising British musician of his generation, was sniped through the head and killed.

Eyvind Johnson

Eyvind Johnson was a Swedish author. He became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1957 and shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with Harry Martinson in 1974 with the citation: for a narrative art, far-seeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom.

The choice for Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson in 1974 was controversial as both were on the Nobel panel themselves and Graham Greene, Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov were the favoured candidates that year.

Johnson was born in Näsberg village, Edefors parish Boden, Norrbotten. In Boden they show the small house where he grew up.

His most noted works include Här har du ditt liv! (Here is Your Life!) (1935), Strändernas Svall (Return to Ithaca) (1946) and Hans Nådes Tid (The Days of his Grace) (1960).

Gaylord P. Harnwell

Gaylord Probasco Harnwell was an American educator and physicist, who was president of the University of Pennsylvania from 1953 to 1970. He also held a great number of positions in a wide variety of national political and educational boards and committees, as well as senior positions in both the Office of the Governor of Pennsylvania and the United States Navy. In the later part of his life he also toured both the Soviet Union and Iran as a promoter of higher education.

Harnwell was born in Evanston, Illinois to Chicago born lawyer Frederick William and Anna Jane Wilcox Harnwell. After attending Evanston Township High School and Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania in 1924, Harnwell attended both Cambridge University and then Princeton University, gaining an M.A. and Ph.D. in physics in 1926 and 1927 respectively. From 1927 until 1928 Harwell taught physics at the California Institute of Technology and then from 1928 to 1938 he taught at Princeton, becoming associate professor by 1936. Then in 1938 Harnwell took over the physics department at the University of Pennsylvania.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Harnwell was given a leave of absence to serve as director of the University of California Division of War Research for the U.S. Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory in San Diego, California from 1942 until 1946, earning the Medal for Merit the following year.

Harnwell returned to the university's physics department until 1953 when he was elected as the university’s president, a position he held until 1970. During his term he oversaw rapid expansion of the university during a period that is cited as "a new milestone in the history of the development of the University."

During his time as president, Harnwell also served in a number of positions within the United States Navy, including chairman of the Ordnance Committee of the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense and chairman of the Committee on Undersea Warfare of the National Research Council. He was also a member of the Advisory Panel on Ordnance, Transport and Supply of the Department of Defense, Advisory Board of the U. S. Navy Ordnance Laboratory, Science Information Council of the National Science Foundation and congressional Subcommittee on Military Applications of Atomic Energy. In 1958 Harnwell was awarded the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award.

Harnwell also toured educational facilities in the Soviet Union and Iran in 1958 and then 1960 and 1961, discussing the proposal to found an American-style university in Shiraz. These tours gave Harnwell material for a number of published works, and fostered relationships between University of Pennsylvania and Pahlavi University in Iran. From 1958 until 1970 he was also a member of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company board, and in 1971 became president of the Penn Central Company. He also held a number of other influential positions, including Public Governor of the New York Stock Exchange, director of the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia, First Pennsylvania Banking and Trust Company, Philadelphia CARE Committee, Rore-Amchem, Inc., the United Fund of the Philadelphia Area, the Food Distribution Center Corporation, the National Society of Scabbard and Blade, and the Institute for Educational Management in Boston.

Harnwell was also involved in the office of the state governor, as chairman of the Council of Science and Technology, Committee on Tax Administration, Tax Study and Revision Commission and Commonwealth Priorities Commission at various times in the last decade of his time as president of the University of Pennsylvania. His influence in the university and governors office continued after his retirement, until his death in April, 1982.

Gale Gordon

Gale Gordon was an American character actor. Remembered best as Lucille Ball's longtime television foil — and particularly as cantankerously combustible, tightfisted bank executive Theodore J. Mooney, on Ball's second television situation comedy, The Lucy Show — Gordon was just as respected for his earlier career in classic American radio, where he was once the highest-paid actor in the medium, even though he was never a top-billed radio star.

Born Charles T. Aldrich, Jr. in New York City, the son of British actress Gloria Gordon and her vaudevillian husband Charles Aldrich, Gordon's first big radio break came was the recurring role of Mayor La Trivia on Fibber McGee and Molly, before playing Rumson Bullard on the show's successful spinoff, The Great Gildersleeve. Gordon and his character of Mayor La Trivia briefly left the show in December of 1942, both had enlisted in World War 2.

Gordon was the first actor to play the role of Flash Gordon, in the 1935 radio serial The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon. In 1950, Gordon played John Granby in the radio series Granby's Green Acres, which became the basis for the 1960s television series, Green Acres. Gordon went on to create the role of pompous principal Osgood Conklin on Our Miss Brooks, carrying the role to television when the show moved there in 1952.

In the interim, Gordon turned up as Rudolph Atterbury on My Favorite Husband, which starred Lucille Ball in a precursor to I Love Lucy. Gordon and Ball previously worked together on The Wonder Show, starring Jack Haley, from 1938 to 1939. The two had a long-term friendship as well as recurring professional partnership. Gordon also had a recurring role as fictitious Rexall Drugs sponsor representative Mr. Scott on yet another radio hit, The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, staying with the role as long as Rexall sponsored the show.

The widely acknowledged master of the "slow-burn" temper explosion in character, Gordon was actually the first pick to play Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy, but he was committed to Our Miss Brooks and had to decline the offer in favor of William Frawley. But he did make two guest shots on the show as Ricky Ricardo's boss, Alvin Littlefield, owner of the Tropicana Club where Ricky's band played, and he later played a judge on a The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour episode. Gordon also had a co-starring role in the television comedy Pete and Gladys. At this time, he guest starred with Pat O'Brien in the ABC sitcom Harrigan and Son, the story of a fictitious father-and-son pair of lawyers.

In 1962, Ball created The Lucy Show and planned to hire Gordon to play Theodore J. Mooney, the banker who was first Lucy Carmichael's executor and subsequently her employer, when she went to work in his bank. Gordon, however, was still under contract to play the second George Wilson neighbor, (after the death of Joseph Kearns) on Dennis the Menace. When that show ended in spring 1963, Gordon joined The Lucy Show as Mr. Mooney for the 1963-64 season. In the interim, Charles Lane played the similar Mr. Barnsdahl character for the 1962-63 season. The somewhat portly Gordon was not only adept at physical comedy but could do a perfect cartwheel. He did this once on The Lucy Show and again as a guest on The Dean Martin Show.

After the sale of Desilu studios, Ball shut down The Lucy Show in 1968 and retooled it into Here's Lucy. She used Gordon yet again--this time as her irascible boss (and brother-in-law) Harry Carter at an employment agency that specialized in unusual jobs. It was really the Lucy Carmichael/Mr. Mooney relationship continued with new names and a new setting.

Gordon all but retired when Here's Lucy ended (although he did reprise his role of Mr. Mooney in the first aired episode of Hi Honey, I'm Home!), but in the 1980s he came out of retirement to join Ball one last time, for the short-lived Life With Lucy. When Lucille Ball finally brought an end to her career, Gordon turned out to be the only actor to have co-starred or guest-starred in every weekly series, radio or television, she had done since the 1940s.

Gordon died of lung cancer at age 89 in Escondido, California

René Mayer

René Mayer was born on 4 May 1895, in Paris and died on 13 December 1972, in Paris. Mayer was a French Radical politician of the Fourth Republic who served briefly as Prime Minister during 1953. He led the Mayer Authority from 1955 to 1958.

Louis Seigner

Louis Seigner, born 23 June 1903 to Arcisse, hamlet of the commune of Saint-Chef in the Isère, and died on 20 January 1991, his apartment in Paris, is a french film, theater. He was a professor at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art and french dean of the Comédie-Française.

Louis de Cazenave

Louis de Cazenave was, at the time of his death, the oldest French poilu still alive. As of December 11, 2007, he was the fourth-oldest man in Europe and the eleventh-oldest man in the world as well, until his own death just 40 days later.

Born and raised in Saint-Georges-d'Aurac and mobilized at the end of 1916, he found himself on the colonial infantry front in the 5th Senegalese Tirailleur Battalion, and he took part in the battle of Chemin des Dames.

At the end of the war, de Cazenave returned to Haute-Loire and married in 1920 to Marie, a postmistress with whom he had three sons. He became a railwayman, joining the predecessor to the SNCF. His experiences led him to become a convinced pacifist; later on, he participated in the strikes and demonstrations of the Popular Front in 1936 before going into retirement in 1941. During the Nazi occupation of France, he subscribed to the banned left-wing libertarian journal La Patrie Humaine and was imprisoned by the pro-Nazi regime.

He lived in Brioude with his family. Although at first refusing any decorations, de Cazenave accepted the Légion d’honneur in 1995, along with several other veterans.

Jean-Pascal Delamuraz

Jean-Pascal Delamuraz was a Swiss politician and member of the Swiss Federal Council (1983-1998).

He obtained a degree in political science in 1960 and became that same year deputy director of the Swiss National Exhibition (Expo 64). He was a member of the Lausanne City Parliament for ten years (1960-70). In 1970, he was elected to the Municipal Council in charge of Public works.

After the election of Georges-André Chevallaz to the Federal Council, Delamuraz was appointed Mayor of Lausanne, and from 1981 to 1983 was a member of the Government of the Canton of Vaud in charge of the Department of Agriculture, Industry and Trade. He belonged to the National Council from 1975 until 1983, and was for two years chairman of the control committee. He fought for Switzerland's membership of the European Economic Area and of the World Trade Organisation, and played a decisive role in shaping the new Swiss agricultural policy.

Delamuraz was elected to the Swiss Federal Council on December 7, 1983, and handed over office on March 30, 1998. He was affiliated to the Free Democratic Party and served as secretary general of its Vaud (cantonal) section. He started the bilateral negotiations that led to the adoption of seven agreements with the European Union.

A very popular political figure, Delamuraz was elected honorary president of the New Swiss European Movement (NOMES). He died a few months after his resignation leaving a widow, Catherine Delamuraz, a son and a daughter.

During his time in office he held the following departments:

Federal Military Department (1984–1986)
Federal Department of Economic Affairs (1987–1998)
He was also President of the Confederation twice, in 1989 and 1996.

Otto Stich

Otto Stich is a Swiss politician.

He was elected to the Federal Council of Switzerland on 7 December 1983 and handed over office on 31 October 1995. He is affiliated to the Social Democratic Party.

During his time in office he held the Federal Department of Finance and was President of the Confederation twice in 1988 and 1994.

Arthur Honegger

Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les Six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.

Born Oscar-Arthur Honegger (the first name was never used) in Le Havre, France, he initially studied harmony and violin in Paris, and after a brief period in Zurich, returned there to study with Charles Widor and Vincent d'Indy. He continued to study through the 1910s, before writing the ballet Le dit des jeux du monde in 1918, generally considered to be his first characteristic work. In 1926 he married Andrée Vaurabourg, a pianist and fellow student at the Paris Conservatoire. They had one daughter, Pascale, born in 1932. Honegger also had a son, Jean-Claude (1926-2003), with the singer Claire Croiza.

In the early 1920s Honegger shot to fame with his "dramatic psalm" Le Roi David ("King David"), which is still in the choral repertoire. Between World War I and World War II, Honegger was very prolific. He composed the music for Abel Gance's epic 1927 film, Napoléon. He composed nine ballets and three vocal stage works, amongst other works. One of those stage works, Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (1935), a "dramatic oratorio", is thought of as one of his finest works. In addition to his works written alone, he collaborated with Jacques Ibert on both an opera, L'Aiglon (1937), and an operetta. During this time period he also wrote Danse de la Chèvre (1921), an essential piece of flute repertoire. Dedicated to René Le Roy and written for flute alone, this piece is lively and young, but with the same directness of all Honegger's work.

Honegger had always remained in touch with Switzerland, his parents' country of origin, but with the outbreak of the war and the invasion of the Nazis, he found himself unable to leave Paris. He joined the French Resistance and was generally unaffected by the Nazis themselves, who allowed him to continue his work without too much interference. However, he was greatly depressed by the war. Between its outbreak and his death, he wrote his last four symphonies (numbers two to five) which are among the most powerful symphonic works of the 20th century. Of these, the third, subtitled Symphonie Liturgique with its three movements evoking the Latin Mass (Dies Irae, De profundis clamavi and Dona nobis pacem), is probably the best known. Written in 1946 just after the end of the war, it has parallels with Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem of 1940. In complete contrast with this work is the lyrical, nostalgic Symphony no. 4, subtitled "Deliciae Basilienses" ("The Delights of Basel") and written as a tribute to days of relaxation spent in that Swiss city during the war.

Honegger was widely known as a train enthusiast, and once notably said: "I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses." His "mouvement symphonique" Pacific 231 (a depiction of a steam locomotive) gained him early notoriety in 1923.

His works were championed by his long time friend Georges Tzipine, who conducted the premiere recordings of some of them (Cris du Monde oratorio, Nicolas de Flüe).

In 1953 he wrote his last composition, A Christmas Cantata. Arthur Honegger died at home of a heart attack on November 27, 1955 and was interred in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.

Paul-Émile Victor

Paul-Émile Victor was a French ethnologist and explorer.

Victor was born in Geneva, Switzerland. He graduated from École Centrale de Lyon in 1928. In 1934, he participated in an expedition traversing Greenland. After World War II he initiated the Expéditions polaires françaises to organize French polar expeditions. He died in 1995 on Bora Bora, to which he had retired in 1977.

Mount Victor, in the Belgica Mountains of Antarctica, is named for him.

Jean Rostand

Jean Rostand was a French biologist and philosopher.

Active as an experimental biologist, Rostand became famous for his work as a science writer, as well as a philosopher and an activist. His scientific work covered a variety of biological fields such as amphibian embryology, parthenogenesis and teratogeny, while his literary output extended into popular science, history of science and philosophy.

He was the son of playwright Edmond Rostand and poetess Rosemonde Gérard as well as the brother of novelist and playwright Maurice Rostand.

Following the footsteps of his father, Rostand was elected to the prestigious Académie française in 1959.

Rostand was a dynamic activist in several causes, in particular against nuclear proliferation and the death penalty. An agnostic, he demonstrated deep humanist convictions. He wrote several books on the question of eugenism and the responsibilities of mankind regarding its own fate and its place in nature.

Henri-Georges Clouzot

Henri-Georges Clouzot was a French film director, screenwriter and producer.

Clouzot was born in Niort, Deux-Sèvres. After studying classics at university, he first attempted to make his living as a journalist. However, in the 1930s, he worked as supervisor for a dubbing film company in Berlin, where he was exposed to the groundbreaking camerawork of the German cinema of the time. On his return to France, he began to work on film scripts, and then made his directorial debut with L'assassin habite au 21 (1942), which starred Pierre Fresnay and Suzy Delair. The film was made for the Continental Film Company, which had been set up in the occupied part of France at the behest of the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels intended the company to produce pure entertainment, in the hope of keeping French moviegoers content (Hollywood films were banned under the occupation).

Clouzot's next film for Continental, Le Corbeau (1943), also starred Pierre Fresnay alongside popular leading lady Ginette Leclerc. The movie is a noir thriller concerning a spate of poison pen letters in a small French town. Critics have seen this as a comment on life under the occupation, where denunciations were common.[citation needed] After the liberation in 1944, the film became the subject of controversy as to whether it was a subtle work of resistance or an act of collaboration; either way, the film defied Continental's remit for making films with limited intellectual content. Because of the scandal, Clouzot was temporarily suspended from his professional activities in 1945. When he returned to film directing, he won several awards at the Venice Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival with Quai des orfèvres (1947), Manon (1949), and Le Salaire de la Peur (The Wages of Fear) (1952), all of which were also very popular with audiences.

Clouzot had a pessimistic view of society, as is shown in later films. These include Les Diaboliques (1954), a macabre thriller which presents an ambivalent and ambiguous pair of women, played by Simone Signoret and Véra Clouzot, who both appear to be plotting the murder of a sadistic headmaster (Paul Meurisse), the lover of the first and the husband of the second; Le Mystère Picasso (1956), a documentary on the method of the painter and the birth of few of his paintings; and La Vérité (1960), a drama starring Brigitte Bardot.

Henri-Georges Clouzot died in Paris on January 12, 1977.

Gustave Roud

Gustave Roud is a poet and a photographer romand Swiss born on 20 April 1897 at St. Légier in canton Vaud and died on 10 November 1976 at the hospital in Moudon.

He studied classics and obtained a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Lausanne and published his first poems in the book Waldenses (1915)

After an unfortunate attempt, he gives to education and settled permanently in Carrouge, and is dedicated to its activities: writing poetry, translation, art critic, and also photography.

His first book, Goodbye, seems at the Editions of Aquarius in Lausanne in 1927. It coordinates with Ramuz, from 1930 to 1932, the weekly magazine today where he became the secretary of the drafting. From 1936 to 1966 he worked in the reading panel editions of the Book Guild.

In the 1940s, he published his translations (Hölderlin, Novalis, Rilke and Trakl)
Gustave Roud was a talented and passionate photographer, who has made a real work, but remained little known in this field, having been removed from distribution. Cultural recognition and social, in fact, been limited to his poetry by a local environment which has not always appealed to the quality of his work considered as a secondary passion. It is one of the few creators binder so intimate writing and photography, for example in different registers, Lewis Carroll and Denis Roche.

In his search inside the landscapes that surround it and the beings that inhabit them, are a matter of questioning, their faces and their bodies in everyday life of days become the support of his intelligence, his sensitivity, its fragility, of his desire. This expression is the manifestation of the subtle relationship between one be torn and his surroundings.

Jean Giono

Jean Giono was a French author renowned for his works of fiction set in the Provence region of France.

He was born and lived for many years in Manosque, Haute Provence. After finishing his studies at the local high school, he worked as a bank employee until World War I, during which he served as a soldier. In 1919, he returned to the bank and a year later, married a childhood friend with whom he had two children. He left the bank in 1930 to dedicate himself to writing on a full-time basis, after the success of his first novel, Colline.

In 1953, he was the recipient of the Prince Rainier of Monaco literary prize, awarded for his lifetime achievements. He later became a member of the Académie Goncourt in 1954 and joined the Conseil Littéraire of Monaco in 1963.

Among his most famous writings are the three novels of his "Pan Trilogy", which allude to the Greek God Pan and pantheism: Colline, Un de Baumugnes, and Regain. He is also well known for the book Voyage in Italy and the short story The Man Who Planted Trees (1953).

The Man Who Planted Trees has a particular resonance in the early 21st century, with its strong ecological, human-scale sustainability message.

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the main founder of Surrealism. His writings include the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as pure psychic automatism.

Born to a family of modest means in Tinchebray (Orne) in Normandy, he studied medicine and psychiatry. During World War I he worked in a neurological ward in Nantes, where he met the spiritual son of Alfred Jarry, Jacques Vaché, whose anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition influenced Breton considerably. Vaché committed suicide at age 24 and his war-time letters to Breton and others were published in a volume entitled Lettres de guerre (1919), for which Breton wrote four introductory essays.

In 1919 Breton founded the review Littérature with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault. He also connected with Dadaist Tristan Tzara. In 1924 he was instrumental to the founding of the Bureau of Surrealist Research.

In The Magnetic Fields (Les Champs Magnétiques), a collaboration with Soupault, he put the principle of automatic writing into practice. He published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, and was editor of La Révolution surréaliste from 1924. A group coalesced around him — Philippe Soupault, Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, René Crevel, Michel Leiris, Benjamin Péret, Antonin Artaud, and Robert Desnos.

Anxious to combine the themes of personal transformation found in the works of Arthur Rimbaud with the politics of Karl Marx, Breton joined the French Communist Party in 1927, from which he was expelled in 1933. During this time, he survived mostly off the sale of paintings from his art gallery.

Under Breton's direction, Surrealism became a European movement that influenced all domains of art, and called into question the origin of human understanding and human perceptions of things and events.

In 1935, there was a conflict between Breton and Ilya Ehrenburg during the first "International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture" which opened in Paris in June. Breton, had been insulted by Ehrenburg -- along with all fellow surrealists -- in a pamphlet which said, among other things, that surrealists were "pederasts". Breton slapped Ehrenburg several times on the street, which led to surrealists being expelled from the Congress. Crevel, who according to Salvador Dalí, was "the only serious communist among surrealists" was isolated from Breton and other surrealists, who were unhappy with Crevel because of his homosexuality and upset with communists as a whole.

In 1938 Breton accepted a cultural commission from the French government to travel to Mexico. After a conference held at the National Autonomous University of Mexico about surrealism, Breton stated after getting lost in Mexico City (as no one was waiting for him at the airport) "I don't know why I came here. Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world".

However, visiting Mexico provided the opportunity to meet Trotsky. Breton and other surrealists sought refuge via a long boat ride from Patzcuaro to the surreal town of Erongaricuaro. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were among the visitors to the hidden community of intellectuals and artists. Together, Breton and Trotsky wrote a manifesto Pour un art révolutionnaire indépendent (published under the names of Breton and Diego Rivera) calling for a "complete freedom of art", which was becoming increasingly difficult in the world situation of the time.

In 1939 Breton collaborated with artist Wifredo Lam on the publication of Breton's poem "Fata Morgana", which was illustrated by Lam.

Breton was again in the medical corps of the French Army at the start of World War II. The Vichy government banned his writings as "the very negation of the national revolution" and Breton and escaped with the help of the American Varian Fry to the United States and the Caribbean in 1941. Breton learned to know Martinican writer Aimé Césaire, and later penned the introduction to the 1947 edition of Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. During his exile in New York City he met Elisa, the Chilean woman who would become his third wife.

In 1944, he and Elisa traveled to the Gaspé Peninsula in Québec, Canada, where he wrote Arcane 17, a book which expresses his fears of World War II, describes the marvels of the Rocher Percé and the northeastern end of North America, and celebrates his newly found love with Elisa.

Breton returned to Paris in 1946, where he intervened against French colonialism (for example as a signatory of the Manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian war) and continued, until his death, to foster a second group of surrealists in the form of expositions or reviews (La Brèche, 1961-1965). In 1959, André Breton organized an exhibit in Paris.

André Breton died in 1966 at 70 and was buried in the Cimetière des Batignolles in Paris.

Lionel Rose

Lionel Edward Rose is an Australian bantamweight boxer, now retired, who became the first Aboriginal in boxing history to win a world title.

Born and raised at Jackson's Track near the Victorian town of Warragul[1], Rose grew up in hardship, learning to box from his father, Roy, a useful fighter on the tent-show circuit. According to the boxing historian Grantlee Kieza, Rose "sparred with rags on his hands in a ring made from fencing wire stretched between trees".

At the age of 10, Rose struck up a friendship with a press photographer, Graham Walsh, who encouraged him and bought him his first pair of gloves. Aged about 15, he came under the tutelage of Frank Oates, a Warragul trainer. He won the Australian amateur flyweight title at age 15.

Rose began his professional boxing career on 9 September 1969, outpointing Mario Magriss over eight rounds. This fight was in Warragul, but the majority of Rose's fights were to be held in Melbourne. Along the way he was helped by Jack and Shirley Rennie, in whose Melbourne home he stayed, training every day in their backyard gym.

After five wins in a row, on 23 July 1965, he was rematched with Singtong Por Tor, whom Rose had beaten in a 12-round decision. Por Tor inflicted Rose's first defeat, beating him on points in six rounds. On 14 October of the same year, he had his first fight abroad, beating Laurie Ny by a decision in 10 rounds at Christchurch, New Zealand.

Over his next nine fights, he had a record of eight wins and one loss, with one knockout. The lone loss in those nine fights was to Ray Perez, against whom Rose split a pair of bouts. Then, on 28 October 1966, Rose met Noel Kunde at Melbourne, for the Australian bantamweight title. Rose won the title by defeating Kunde in a fifteen round decision.

He won one more belt in 1966, and eight in 1967 (including a thirteenth round knockout win against Rocky Gattelari to defend his Australian championship) before challenging Fighting Harada for the world's bantamweight title on 26 February 1968, in Tokyo. Rose made history by becoming the first Aboriginal to be a world champion boxer when he defeated Harada in a 15-round decision. This win made Rose an instant national hero in Australia, and an icon among Aboriginals. A public reception at Melbourne Town Hall was witnessed by a crowd of more than 100,000. On 2 July of that year, he returned to Tokyo to retain his title with a 15 round decision win over Takao Sakurai. Then, on 6 December, he met Chucho Castillo at the Inglewood Forum in Inglewood, California. Rose beat Castillo by decision, but the points verdict in favour of him infuriated many in the pro-Castillo crowd, and a riot began: 14 fans and fight referee Dick Young were hospitalised for injuries received.

Rose was Australian of the Year in 1968, the first Aboriginal to be awarded the honour. The same year he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

On 8 March 1969, Rose retained the title with a 15-round decision over Alan Rudkin, but five months later he returned to Inglewood, where he faced Ruben Olivares on 22 August. Rose lost the world bantamweight title to Olivares via a fifth-round knockout.

Rose continued boxing after his defeat against Olivares, but, after defeats against practically unknown fighters, many believed he was done as a prime fighter. However, he was far from finished: he upset future world lightweight champion Itshimatsu Suzuki on 10 October 1970 in a 10-round decision, and once again, he positioned himself as a world title challenger, albeit in the lightweight division, 17 pounds over the division where he crowned himself world champion.

Despite having lost to Jeff White for the Australian lightweight title, Rose got another world title try when he faced WBC world junior lightweight champion Yoshiaki Numata, on 30 May 1971, at Hiroshima. Numata beat Rose by a fifteen round decision, and Rose announced his retirement soon after.

In 1975, he came back, but after losing four of his next six bouts, including one against Rafael Limon, Rose decided to retire for good. Rose compiled a record of 42 wins and 11 losses as a professional boxer, with 12 wins by knockout.

Lionel Rose was able to manage his money and make good financial decisions, and he has enjoyed the monetary benefits his career brought him. Lionel was showcased in 2002 in the Ring Magazine section Where are they now?.

During his off time from boxing in the 1970s, Rose embarked on a successful singing career in Australia having hits with I Thank You and Please Remember Me in 1970.

In 1996, Rose presented young burns-attack victim Tjandamurra O'Shane with his world-title belt, hoping to speed the youngster's recovery. O'Shane, also an Aborigine, had been the victim of an horrific attack in Cairns the previous year.

In 2007 Rose suffered a stroke that left him with speech and movement difficulties.

Lars Ahlin

Lars Ahlin was an award winning Swedish author and aesthetician.

Ahlin left school when he was 13 to support his family, although he later attended several folk high schools. When he was 18, he had a mystical experience. He eventually moved to Stockholm, where he wrote two unpublished novels before his first success, Tåbb med manifestet (Tåbb with the Manifesto, 1943). The story, about a young proletarian who rejects the values of communism in favor of a secularized Lutheran theology where man is judged by his deeds, without preconceived notions, set the stage for his subsequent works. Critics have compared Ahlin to Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Thomas Mann. Among the awards he received are the Prize of the Nine in 1960, the Great Novel Prize in 1962, and the Small Nobel Prize in 1966.

Luigi Santucci

Luigi Santucci was a writer, novelist, poet and commediografo Italian.

Considered critical by Milan's main narrator of the second half of the twentieth century. He attended the Jesuit college in Milan Istituto Leone XIII. He graduated in literature, convinced anti-fascist, fled during the Second World War in Switzerland. Back in Italy taught letters in a school of Gorizia and then at the Catholic University of Milan. Falls in the tradition of Catholic writers lombardi (Carlo Bo called it "the most important Catholic writer of his time"), is deeply religious.

Finalist at Campiello Prize in 1964 with his novel The velocifero and winner in 1967 with the novel Orpheus in paradise.

Sir Eric Pearce

Sir Eric Pearce was a broadcaster and television pioneer in Australia.

Pearce started his career in England and worked for the BBC before moving to Australia. This led to him working at numerous radio stations in the pre-television era, in particular 3DB and 3XY in Melboure. He was also Manager of 5KA Adelaide.

When television came to Australia in 1956, many radio figures sought and achieved employment in the new medium. Sir Eric was no exception, moving to HSV Channel 7 in Melbourne working as newsreader and quiz show host. He felt news readers required credibility and that doing anything other than news for a job was ill-advised. When GTV Channel 9 offered him employment as chief news reader without him having to do any other shows, he took it.

For years he read the news to Melbournians with a catchphrase sign-off "God bless you, and you," the second "you" being directed at his wife. He is best regarded for his coverage of the Moon landing in 1969.

He was a patron for the Deaf Blind Association and an elderly person's home was named after his support.

Made a knight bachelor in 1979 for his services to television in the Commonwealth of Australia, he died on Saturday 12 April 1997, aged 92, still working for GTV Channel 9 as a news advisor and head of correspondence.

Alf Ahlberg

Alf Ahlberg was a Swedish writer, humanist and philosopher.

Ahlberg was born in 1892 in Laholm, Sweden, the son of Axel Ahlberg and Anna Lindskog, and the brother of the architect Hakon Ahlberg. He studied at the University of Lund and came to know in particular Sigfrid Lindstrom and Gunnar Aspelin. In the summer he stayed in Lund to read Schopenhauer in the botanical garden at the foot of Aagardhs statue. He took the MBA in 1911 and his Ph.D in 1917 with the thesis Material problems of Platonism: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Bruno: a historical-critical study. Later was a senior teacher at a college in Stockholm and was a lecturer at the Arbetarinstitutet. In 1927, he became a teacher at the workers educational institute, Brunnsvik, and in 1932 he became the headmaster, which he remained until his retirement in 1959. For several years he wrote frequently in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. In 1933, he married Edith Larsson, who died in 1944. 1946 he remarried with MA Rut Davidsson.

Ahlberg was mainly known for his scientific works on philosophy. One of the most noted works, ”The social and political myths” (1937), is about Nazi propaganda and mythology. In ”Escape from loneliness” (1949) he investigated why the contemporary citizen is so susceptible to propaganda. His main work of the "History of philosophy" was excellent as it was the first of its kind and sold in several editions (the last and fifth revised edition was published in 1967). In 1935 it was followed up by History of Psychology. He also wrote several biographies on, for example, Augustine, John Malmberg, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, and made translations of José Ortega y Gasset.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alf_Ahlberg"

Richard Donner

Richard Donner is an American film director, film producer, and comic book writer. The production company The Donners' Company is owned by Donner and his wife, producer Lauren Shuler Donner. After directing the horror film The Omen Donner became famous for the hailed creation of the first modern superhero film, Superman, starring Christopher Reeve. The influence of this film eventually helped establish the superhero concept as a respected film genre. Furthermore, Donner reinvigorated the buddy film genre with Lethal Weapon and its sequels.

Donner was born Richard Donald Schwartzberg in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Hattie and Fred Schwartzberg; he has a sister, Joan. Donner started his career with hopes of acting but quickly moved into directing commercials and making business films. He moved into television in the late 1950s, directing some episodes of the Steve McQueen western serial Wanted: Dead or Alive and the Chuck Connors western The Rifleman.

He has worked on over twenty-five other television series including The Fugitive, Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, The Six Million Dollar Man, Kojak, Tales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone (most notably the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" starring William Shatner), as well as the serial Danger Island from the children's program The Banana Splits. His first film, the low-budget military drama X-15 (1961) starring Charles Bronson, was not a great success, and he returned to television work.

His break-through film was in 1976 with The Omen, produced in the 'horror boom' following The Exorcist.

In 1978, Richard Donner directed the film Superman: The Movie, starring a then unknown Christopher Reeve. The film became a hit worldwide, projecting both Reeve and Donner to international fame. Armed with two scripts for Superman and the sequel Superman II, he shot principal photography for both films to save on set dressing and actor/crew overheads. However, the original ending for the first film where Superman flew from accident to disaster was deemed to be missing a certain something by the film's independent financiers Ilya Salkind and his father Alexander Salkind. The scripted time reversal ending of Superman II was taken to pad out and fulfill Superman once the film had been identified as a priority with a view to piece together an alternative end to the second film later.

After the first film's successful release in December 1978, Donner was offered the director's role a second time, but demanded that producer Pierre Spengler be removed from the project. Rather than give in to this demand, the Salkinds replaced him with director Richard Lester, who worked with them on The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers and as an uncredited producer on Superman. The decision to remove him from the film series, made by producers Alexander Salkind and Ilya Salkind, has been widely viewed by many fans[who?] as a huge mistake on the Salkinds' part, as the subsequent Superman films helmed by their preferred director Richard Lester, while still breaking the $100 million mark for domestic USA alone were perceived as being of poorer quality and quickly resulted in a downward spiral in popularity for the series.

The demands of Marlon Brando to receive the same percentage of cut for Superman II as he received for Superman regardless of how much previous footage was used exacerbated the Salkinds' position to at least walk away from a, by that time, five-year project with profit as Superman was still un-officially paying back creditors. A no-flexibility attitude from both Brando and Donner saw both removed from the series until 2006 when Donner's definitive (or at least, as close to definitive as possible) version of the movie, simply entitled Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut was released on November 28, 2006 on the same date as to the DVD release of the summer hit, Superman Returns. The footage includes never-before-seen footage of Marlon Brando, a new opening, a new ending and approximately 83% of Donner footage. Some Richard Lester footage was used to fill in the gaps caused by Donner's never completing principal photography for the sequel before his removal. Michael Thau, the editor of the Richard Donner cut also made some minor use of CGI. However, he did not create CGI villains in order to complete the "villains rule the world scene" which was in the original script, but was never shot by Donner.

Donner has mixed commercial flops (Inside Moves, Radio Flyer) and successes (The Goonies, the Lethal Weapon series and Ladyhawke (1985) - which has enjoyed a large cult following). Donner has received little critical appreciation, although he has a strong following amongst genre fans. In the case of Superman, it was Donner who insisted the subject of the comic book superhero should be treated "straight" rather than "camp", an approach that strongly influenced later genre directors such as Bryan Singer, Tim Burton, and Christopher Nolan, who have made successful superhero films of their own. The influence of Superman: The Movie can, to this day, be seen in superhero films outside the Superman storyline, and even outside the DC Comics universe. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man film is debatably one of the strongest examples of that influence. In the early 1980s, Donner proposed to Warner Brothers a non-camp film version of Batman, to star Mel Gibson.

Giorgio Gaber

Giorgio Gaber was an Italian singer-songwriter, actor and playwright. He was also an accomplished guitar player and author of one of the first rock songs in Italian ("Ciao ti dirò", 1958). Together with Sandro Luporini, he pioneered the musical genre known as teatro canzone ("song theatre").

Born in Milan into a lower middle-class family of Gorizian Slovenian origin, Gaber began to play as rehabilitation for an injury to his hand which required constant but not strenuous activity to recover his motor skill. Since his health as a child was not the best and his older brother Marcello played guitar, he was encouraged to play as well. The outcome was good both in terms of his health and artistically, and at only fourteen years of age he was engaged to play at a New Eve's party and earned his first paycheck of 1,000 lire.

Subsequently he began to frequent the Santa Tecla, a venue in Milan where he had the chance to meet musicians of the time, including Luigi Tenco, Gianfranco Reverberi, Adriano Celentano, Ricky Gianco, and Mogol, who obtained a contract for Gaber with Dischi Ricordi. He then played with the Rocky Mountains Old Time Stompers (replacing Tony Dallara who had left to pursue a solo career) and with Rolling Crew.

Because neither Tenco nor Gaber were yet registered with the Italian Society of Authors and Editors they could not trademark the song "Ciao ti dirò" ("I'll Say Hi to You", inspired by Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock"), which was signed off by Giorgio Calabrese and Giampiero Reverberi despite being composed by Tenco and Gaber.

The two went on to continue writing music together, developing at the same time a close friendship. In 1958 they toured Germany together with Adriano Celentano, Enzo Jannacci, Paolo Tomelleri e Gianfranco Reverberi.

Gaber paired up with Enzo Jannacci as I Due Corsari ("The Two Privateers"), who made their debut at the end of 1958 with two vinyl singles - "Come Facette Mammeta", a classic song of Neopolitan humour, and "Non occupatemi il telefono" ("Don't Hog the Telephone"). They continued to release singles with Dischi Ricordi throughout the following year, and in 1960 released their first album, Giorgio Gaber - Enzo Jannacci.

After a sentimental-artistic companionship with singer and actress Maria Monti, he married Ombretta Colli in 1965, then a student of languages (Chinese and Russian) at the University of Milan.

He participated four times in Sanremo, with the songs "Benzina e cerini" ("Petrol and Matches") in 1961, "Così felice" ("So Happy") in 1964, "Mai, Mai, Mai Valentina" ("Never, Never, Never Valentina") in 1966 and "...E allora dai" ("...Well Come On Then!") in 1967.

In 1969 he set one of his best known successes, "Com'è bella la città" ("How Beautiful the City Is"), an example of the introduction of social matters in a song. The following year, he showed at Piccolo teatro his first ediction of Il Signor G ("Mister G"), a recital he repeated in many Italian squares.

In 1974 he was given the Premio Tenco in the first edition of that musical award. Later Gaber also received the Targa Tenco in 2001 for his song "La razza in estinzione" ("The Dying Race") and in 2003 for the album Io non mi sento italiano ("I Don't Feel Italian"). After the Tenco award Gaber abandoned television and began to tour only in theatres, as one of the founders of the teatro canzone genre. He will appear again in TV, although sporadically, only in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Giorgio Gaber died, after a long disease, the 1 January 2003 in his country house in Montemagno near Camaiore (Lucca, Tuscany). He is interred in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, singer, and composer. He was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children. Dizzy's father, James, was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to Dizzy. He started to play the piano at the age of 4. Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz.

In addition to featuring in these epochal moments in bebop, he was instrumental in founding Afro-Cuban jazz, the modern jazz version of what early-jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton referred to as the "Spanish Tinge". Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. In addition to his instrumental skills, Dizzy's beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop. He had an enormous impact on subsequent trumpeters, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians.

Dizzy's first pro job was with the Frank Fairfax orchestra in 1935, after which he joined the respective orchestras of Edgar Hayes and subsequently Teddy Hill, essentially replacing his main influence Roy Eldridge as first trumpet in 1937. In 1939, Gillespie joined up with Cab Calloway's orchestra, with which he recorded one of his earliest compositions, the instrumental "Pickin' The Cabbage", in 1940 (originally released on the Vocalion label, #5467, on 78rpm - said 78rpm record backed with a co-composition with Cab's drummer at the time, Cozy Cole, entitled "Paradiddle"). After Dizzy left Calloway in late 1941, over a notorious incident with a knife, he freelanced with a few bands - most notably being Ella Fitzgerald's orchestra, composed of members of the late Chick Webb's band, in 1942. In 1943, Gillespie then joined up with the Earl Hines orchestra. The legendary big band of Billy Eckstine gave his unusual harmonies a better setting, and it was as a member of Eckstine's band that he was reunited with Parker, after earlier being members of Earl Hines's more conventional band.

With Charlie Parker, Gillespie jammed at famous jazz clubs like Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House, where the first seeds of bebop were planted. Gillespie's compositions like "Groovin' High", "Woody n' You", "Salt Peanuts", and "A Night in Tunisia" sounded radically different, harmonically and rhythmically, than the Swing music popular at the time. One of their first (and greatest) small-group performances together was only issued in 2005: a concert in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945. Gillespie taught many of the young musicians on 52nd Street, like Miles Davis and Max Roach, about the new style of jazz. After a lengthy gig at Billy Berg's club in Los Angeles, which left most of the audience ambivalent or hostile towards the new music, the band broke up. Unlike Parker, who was content to play in small groups and be an occasional featured soloist in big bands, Gillespie aimed to lead a big band himself; his first attempt to do this came in 1945, but it did not prove a success.

After his work with Parker, Gillespie led other small combos (including ones with Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, Lalo Schifrin) and finally put together his first successful big band. He also appeared frequently as a soloist with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic. He also headlined the 1946 independently-produced musical revue film Jivin' in Be-Bop.

In 1948 Dizzy was involved in a traffic accident when the bicycle he was riding was bumped by an automobile. He was slightly injured, and found that he could no longer hit the B-flat above high C. He won the case, but the jury only awarded him $1000, in view of his high earnings up to that point.

On March 11, 1952 Gillespie left for France after being invited by Charles Delaunay to play on Salon du Jazz. Gillespie did not have any other commitments during his time in Paris and on his Blue Star sessions and started to assemble his third big band. Due to his prior success he could now record in the finest studios like Théatre des Champs-Elysées. In 1953 he returned to the United States after a series of successful concerts and recordings, and the 1953 line-up of the Dizzy Gillespie/Stan Getz Sextet featured Gillespie, Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Max Roach. As well as his work with Getz, he also recorded on a couple of occasions with saxophonists Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt.

In 1956 he organized a band to go on a State Department tour of the Middle East and earned the nickname "the Ambassador of Jazz".

He died of pancreatic cancer January 6, 1993, aged 75, and was buried in the Flushing Cemetery, Queens, New York.

Oscar Peterson

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, "O.P." by his friends, and was a member of jazz royalty. He released over 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, and received other numerous awards and honours over the course of his career. He is considered to have been one of the greatest pianists of all time, who played thousands of live concerts to audiences worldwide in a career lasting more than 65 years.

Peterson grew up in the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy, Montreal. It was in this predominantly black neighbourhood that he found himself surrounded by the jazz culture that flourished in the early 20th century. At the age of five, Peterson began honing his skills with the trumpet and piano. However, by the age of seven, after a bout of tuberculosis, he directed all his attention to the piano. His father, Daniel Peterson, an amateur trumpeter and pianist, was one of his first music teachers, and his sister Daisy taught young Oscar classical piano. Young Oscar was persistent at practising scales and classical etudes daily, and thanks to such arduous practice he developed his astonishing virtuosity.

As a child, Peterson also studied with Hungarian-born pianist Paul de Marky, a student of Istvan Thomán who was himself a pupil of Franz Liszt, so his training was predominantly based on classical piano. Meanwhile he was captivated by traditional jazz and learned several ragtimes and especially the boogie-woogie. At that time Peterson was called "the Brown Bomber of the Boogie-Woogie."

At age nine Peterson played piano with control that impressed professional musicians. For many years his piano studies included four to six hours of practice daily. Only in his later years did he decrease his daily practice to just one or two hours. In 1940, at age fourteen, Peterson won the national music competition organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After that victory, he dropped out of school and became a professional pianist working for a weekly radio show, and playing at hotels and music halls.

Peterson resided in a two-storey house on Hammond Road in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, until his his death in 2007 of kidney failure.

Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp is a prominent American jazz saxophonist. Shepp is best known for his passionately Afrocentric music of the late 1960s which focused on highlighting the injustices faced by the African race, as well as for his work with the New York Contemporary Five, Horace Parlan, and his collaborations with his "New Thing" contemporaries, most notably Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane.

Shepp was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, but raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he studied piano, clarinet and alto saxophone before focusing on tenor saxophone (he occasionally plays soprano saxophone and piano). Shepp studied drama at Goddard College from 1955 to 1959, but after a lack of success in securing acting jobs after moving to New York, he turned to music professionally. He played in a Latin jazz band for a short time before joining the band of avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor, who at that time was just beginning to blossom from merely a very eccentric Thelonious Monk-influenced young upstart into one of the most important and controversial figures of the 1960s avantgarde. Shepp appeared on Air, The World Of Cecil Taylor and Cell Walk For Celeste, all of which remain defining Taylor recordings

His first notable forays into recording under his own name came with the New York Contemporary Five band, which included Don Cherry. John Coltrane's admiration led to recordings for Impulse!, the first of which was Four for Trane in 1964, an album of mainly Coltrane compositions on which he was sided by his long-time friend, trombonist Roswell Rudd, bassist Reggie Workman and alto player John Tchicai. The album Giant Steps had been one of Coltrane's best-known, and this collection of new versions on Coltrane's own label was a statement that jazz was not standing still. And Coltrane, Shepp and others were about to move it forward again.

Shepp participated in the sessions for Coltrane's A Love Supreme in early 1965 but none of the takes he participated in were included on the final LP release. However, Shepp, along with Tchicai and others from the Four for Trane sessions, then cut the massively influential and extremely avantgarde Ascension with Coltrane in 1965, and his place alongside Trane at the forefront of the avantgarde scene was epitomized when the pair split a record (the first side a Coltrane set, the second a Shepp set) entitled New Thing at Newport released in late 1965. Some critics felt Shepp was rather too heavily influenced by Coltrane, though Trane's influence at the time was so vast that nearly every saxophonist who was attaining stardom at the time was on the receiving end of this criticism at one point in their careers.

Beginning in 1971, Archie Shepp began a thirty year career as a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Shepp's first two courses were entitled "Revolutionary Concepts in African-American Music" and "Black Musician in the Theater."

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

Starting in bebop and hard bop, Coltrane later pioneered free jazz. He influenced generations of other musicians, and remains one of the most significant tenor saxophonists in jazz history. He was astonishingly prolific: he made about fifty recordings as a leader in his twelve-year-long recording career, and appeared as a sideman on many other albums, notably with trumpeter Miles Davis. As his career progressed, Coltrane's music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension.

John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina on September 23, 1926, grew up in High Point NC, and moved to Philadelphia PA in June 1943. He enlisted in the Navy in 1945, and played in the Navy jazz band. Coltrane returned to civilian life in 1946 and began jazz theory studies with Philadelphia guitarist and composer Dennis Sandole. Coltrane continued under Sandole's tutelage until the early 1950s. Contemporary correspondence shows that Coltrane was already known as "Trane" by this point, and that the music from some 1946 recording sessions had been played for Miles Davis — possibly impressing the latter.

John Coltrane went to Penn Griffin School for the Arts in High Point, NC.

An important moment in the progression of Coltrane's musical development occurred on June 5th, 1945, when he saw Charlie Parker perform for the first time. In "Coltrane on Coltrane" he recounted: "the first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes." Parker became an early idol of his, and they played together on occasion in the late 1940s.

Although there are recordings of Coltrane from as early as 1945, his peers at the time did not recognize 'genius' in the young musician, though he was a member of groups led by Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic and Johnny Hodges in the early- to mid-1950s.

His main career spanned the twelve years between 1955 and 1967, during which time he reshaped modern jazz and influenced generations of other musicians.

Coltrane died from liver cancer at Huntington Hospital in Long Island, NY on July 17, 1967, at the age of 40.

Giuseppe Ungaretti

Giuseppe Ungaretti was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic. A leading representative of the experimental trend known as ermetismo, he was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th century Italian literature. Influenced by symbolism, he was briefly aligned with futurism. Like many futurists, he took an irredentist position during World War I. Ungaretti debuted as a poet while fighting in the trenches, publishing one of his best-known pieces, L'allegria ("The Joy").

During the interwar period, Ungaretti was a collaborator of Benito Mussolini (whom he met during his socialist accession), as well as a foreign-based correspondent for Il Popolo d'Italia and La Gazzetta del Popolo. While briefly associated with the Dadaists, he developed ermetismo as a personal take on poetry. After spending several years in Brazil, he returned home during World War II, and was assigned a teaching post at the University of Rome, where he spent the final decades of his life and career. His fascist past was the subject of controversy.

Ungaretti was born in Alexandria, Egypt into a family from the Tuscan city of Lucca. As a child, he was nursed by a Nubian nurse named Bahita, and, as an adult, claimed that her influence accounted for his own exoticism. Ungaretti's father worked on digging the Suez Canal, where he suffered a fatal accident in 1890. His widowed mother, who ran a bakery on the edge of the Sahara, educated her child on the basis of Roman Catholic tenets.

Giuseppe Ungaretti's formal education began in French, at Alexandria's Swiss School. It was there that he became acquainted with Parnassianism and Symbolist poetry, in particular with Gabriele d'Annunzio, Charles Baudelaire, Jules Laforgue, Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud. He also became familiar with works of the Classicists Giacomo Leopardi and Giosuè Carducci, as well as with the writings of maverick author Giovanni Pascoli. This period marked his debut as a journalist and literary critic, with pieces published Risorgete, a journal edited by anarchist writer Enrico Pea. At the time, he was in correspondence with Giuseppe Prezzolini, editor of the influential magazine La Voce. A regular visitor of Pea's Baracca Rossa ("Red House"), Ungaretti was himself a sympathizer of anarchist-socialist circles.

In 1912, the twenty-four year old Giuseppe Ungaretti moved to Paris, France. On his way there, he stopped in Rome, Florence and Milan, meeting face to face with Prezzolini. Ungaretti attended lectures at the Collège de France and the University of Paris, and had among his teachers philosopher Henri Bergson, whom he reportedly admired. The young writer also met and befriended French literary figure Guillaume Apollinaire, a promoter of Cubism and a forerunner of Surrealism. Apollinaire's work to be a noted influence on his own. He was also in contact with the Italian expatriates, including leading representatives of Futurism such as Carlo Carrà, Umberto Boccioni, Aldo Palazzeschi, Giovanni Papini and Ardengo Soffici, as well as with the independent visual artist Amedeo Modigliani.


Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Ungaretti, like his Futurist friends, supported an irredentist position, and called for his country's intervention on the side of the Entente Powers. Enrolled in the infantry a year later, he saw action on the Northern Italian theater, serving in the trenches. In contrast to his early enthusiasm, he became appalled by the realities of war. The conflict also made Ungaretti discover his talent as a poet, and, in 1917, he published the volume of free verse Il porto sepolto ("The Buried Port"), largely written on the Kras front. Although depicting the hardships of war life, his celebrated L'Allegria was not unenthusiastic about its purpose (also if in the poem "Fratelli", and in others, he describes the absurdity of the war and the brotherhood between all the men); this made Ungaretti's stance contrast with that of Lost Generation writers, who questioned their countries' intents, and similar to that of Italian intellectuals such as Soffici, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Piero Jahier and Curzio Malaparte.

By the time the 1918 armistice was signed, Ungaretti was again in Paris, working as a correspondent for Benito Mussolini's paper Il Popolo d'Italia. He published a volume of French-language poetry, titled La guerre ("The War", 1919). In 1920, Giuseppe Ungaretti married the Frenchwoman Jeanne Dupoix, with whom he had a daughter, Ninon (born 1925), and a son, Antonietto (born 1930).

During that period in Paris, Ungaretti came to affiliate with the anti-establishment and anti-art current known as Dadaism. He was present in the Paris-based Dadaist circle led by Romanian poet Tristan Tzara, being, alongside Alberto Savinio, Julius Evola, Gino Cantarelli, Aldo Fiozzi and Enrico Prampolini, one of the figures who established a transition from Italian Futurism to Dada. In May 1921, he was present at the Dadaist mock trial of reactionary author Maurice Barrès, during which the Dadaist movement began to separate itself into two competing parts, headed respectively by Tzara and André Breton. He was also affiliated with the literary circle formed around the journal La Ronda.

The year after his marriage, he returned to Italy, settling in Rome as a Foreign Ministry employee. By then, Mussolini had organized the March on Rome, which confirmed his seizure of power. Ungaretti joined in the National Fascist Party, signing the pro-fascist Manifesto of the Italian Writers in 1925. In his essays of 1926-1929, republished in 1996, he repeatedly called on the Duce to direct cultural development in Italy and reorganize the Italian Academy on fascist lines. He argued: "The first task of the Academy will be to reestablish a certain connection between men of letters, between writers, teachers, publicists. This people are hungers for poetry. If it had not been for the miracle of Blackshirts, we would never have leaped this far." In his private letters to a French critic, Ungaretti also claimed that fascist rule did not imply censorship. Mussolini, who did not give a favorable answer to Ungaretti's appeal, prefaced the 1923 edition of Il porto sepolto, thus politicizing its message.

In 1925, Ungaretti experienced a religious crisis, which, three years later, made him return to the Roman Catholic Church. Meanwhile, he contributed to a number of journals and published a series of poetry volumes, before becoming a foreign correspondent for Gazzetta del Popolo in 1931, and traveling not only to Egypt, Corsica and the Netherlands, but also to various regions of Italy.

It was during this period that Ungaretti introduced Ermetismo, baptized with the Italian-language word for "hermeticism". The new trend, inspired by both Symbolism and Futurism, had its origins in both Il porto sepolto, where Ungaretti had eliminated structure, syntax and punctuation, and the earlier contributions of Arturo Onofri. The style was indebted to the influence of Symbolists from Edgar Allan Poe to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé and Paul Valéry. Alongside Ungaretti, its main representatives were Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo.

Despite the critical acclaim he enjoyed, the poet confronted himself with financial difficulties. In 1936, he moved to the Brazilian city of São Paulo, and became a Professor of Italian at São Paulo University. It was there that, in 1939, his son Antonietto died as a result of a badly performed appendectomy.

In 1942, three years after the start of World War II, Ungaretti returned to Axis-allied Italy, where he was received with honors by the officials. The same year, he was made a Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Rome. He continued to write poetry, and published a series of essays. By then, Ermetismo came to an end, and Ungaretti, like Montale and Quasimodo, had adopted a more formal style in his poetry.

At the close of the war, following Mussolini's downfall, Ungaretti was expelled from the faculty due to his fascist connections, but reinstated when his colleagues voted in favor of his return. Affected by his wife's 1958 death, Giuseppe Ungaretti sought comfort in traveling throughout Italy and abroad. He visited Japan, the Soviet Union, Israel and the United States.

In 1964, he gave a series of lectures at Columbia University in New York City, and, in 1970, was invited by the University of Oklahoma to receive its Books Abroad Prize. During this last trip, Ungaretti fell ill with bronchopneumonia, and, although he received treatment in New York City, died while under doctor supervision in Milan. He was buried in Rome.

Cesare Pavese

Cesare Pavese was an Italian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator; he is widely considered among the major authors of the 20th century in his home country.

Cesare Pavese was born in Santo Stefano Belbo, in the province of Cuneo. It was the village where his father was born and where the family returned for the summer holidays each year. He did start infant classes in San Stefano Belbo, but the rest of his education was in schools in Turin. As a young man of letters, Pavese had a particular interest in English-language literature, graduating from the University of Turin with a thesis on the poetry of Walt Whitman and translating American and British authors that were then new to the Italian public.

Pavese moved in antifascist circles. In 1935 he was arrested and convicted for having letters from a political prisoner. After a few months in prison he was sent into "confino", internal exile in Southern Italy, the commonly used sentence for those guilty of lesser political crimes. A year later he was back in Turin where he worked for the left wing publisher Giulio Einaudi, as editor and translator.

He was in Rome when he was called up into the fascist army, but because of his asthma he spent six months in a military hospital. When he returned to Turin, German troops occupied the streets and most of his friends had left to fight as partisans. Pavese fled to the hills around Serralunga di Crea, near Casale Monferrato. He took no part in the armed struggle taking place in that area.

After the war he joined the Italian Communist Party and worked on the party's newspaper, L'Unità. The bulk of his work was published during this time. Towards the end of his life, he visited frequently Le Langhe, the area where he was born, where he found great solace. However, love frustrations (Constance Dowling, to whom his last novel was dedicated) and political disillusionment led him to his suicide, by an overdose of barbiturates, in 1950 – the year in which he won the Strega Prize for La Bella Estate, comprising three novellas: 'La tenda', written in 1940, 'Il diavolo sulle colline'(1948) and 'Tra donne sole' (1949).

Leslie Fiedler wrote of Pavese's death "...for the Italians, his death has come to have a weight like that of Hart Crane for us, a meaning that penetrates back into his own work and functions as a symbol in the literature of an age." The circumstances of his suicide, which took place in a hotel room, grossly mimic the last scene of Tra Donne Sole (Among Women Only), his penultimate book. His last book was 'La Luna e i Falò', published in Italy in 1950 and translated into English as The Moon and the Bonfire by Louise Sinclair in 1952

Giorgio Bassani

Giorgio Bassani was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and international intellectual.

Bassani was born in Bologna into a prosperous Jewish family of Ferrara, where he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico (a doctor), brother Paolo, and sister Jenny. In 1934 he completed his studies at his secondary school, the liceo classico L. Ariosto in Ferrara. Music had been his first great passion and he considered a career as a pianist; however literature soon became the focus of his artistic interests.

In 1935 he enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bologna. Commuting to lectures by train (third class) from Ferrara, he studied under the art historian Roberto Longhi. His ideal of the “free intellectual” was the Liberal historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce. Despite the anti-Semitic race laws which were introduced from 1938, he was able to graduate in 1939, writing a thesis on the nineteenth-century writer, journalist, radical and lexicographer Niccolò Tommaseo. As a Jew in 1939, however, work opportunities were now limited and he became a schoolteacher in the Jewish School of Ferrara in via Vignatagliata.

In 1940 his first book, Una città di pianura (“A City of the Plain”), was published under the pseudonym Giacomo Marchi in order to evade the race laws. During this period, along with friends he had made in Ferrara’s intellectual circle, he became a clandestine political activist. His activity in the anti-fascist resistance led to his arrest in May 1943; he was released on 26 July, the day after Benito Mussolini was ousted from power.

A little over a week later he married Valeria Sinigallia, whom he had met playing tennis. They moved to Florence for a brief period, living under assumed names, then at the end of the year, to Rome, where he would spend the rest of his life. His first volume of poems, Storie dei poveri amanti e altri versi, appeared in 1944; a second, Te lucis ante, followed in 1947. He edited the literary review Botteghe oscure for Princess Marguerite Caetani from its founding in 1948 until it halted publication in 1960.

In 1953 Passeggiata prima di cena appeared and in 1954 Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Trotti. In the same year he became editor of Paragone, a journal founded by Longhi and his wife Anna Band. Bassani’s writings reached a wider audience in 1956 with the publication of the Premio Strega-winning book of short stories, Cinque storie Ferraresi.

As an editorial director of Feltrinelli Bassani was responsible for the posthumous publication in 1958 of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo, a novel which had been rejected by Elio Vittorini at Mondadori, and also by Einaudi, but which became one of the great successes of post-war Italian literature. Bassani’s enthusiastic editing of the text, following instructions from Elena Croce (daughter of Benedetto) who had offered him the manuscript, later became controversial however; recent editions have been published which follow the manuscript more closely.

Also in 1958 Bassani’s novel Gli occhiali d’oro was published, an examination, in part, of the marginalisation of Jews and homosexuals. Together with stories from Cinque storie ferraresi (reworked and under the new title Dentro le mura (1973)) it was to be form part of a series of works known collectively as Il romanzo di Ferrara which explored the town, with its Christian and Jewish elements, its perspectives and its landscapes. The series also includes: Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1962, Premio Viareggio prizewiner); Dietro la porta (1964); L'airone (1968) and L'odore del fieno (1972). These works realistically document the Italian Jewish community under Fascism in a style that manifests the difficulties of searching for truth in the meanderings of memory and moral conscience. In 1960 one of his novels was adapted as the film Long Night in 1943.

Bassani died in 2000 and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ferrara.

Ernest Bloch

Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.

Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. He then travelled around Europe, moving to Germany (where he studied composition from 1900-1901 with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt), on to Paris in 1903 and back to Geneva before settling in the United States of America in 1916, taking American citizenship in 1924. He held several teaching appointments in the U.S., with George Antheil, Frederick Jacobi, Bernard Rogers, and Roger Sessions among his pupils. In December 1920 he was appointed the first Musical Director of the newly formed Cleveland Institute of Music, a post he held until 1925. Following this he was director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music until 1930.

In 1941 Bloch moved to the small coastal community of Agate Beach, Oregon and lived there the rest of his life. He died in 1959 in Portland, Oregon, of cancer at the age of 78.

Giovanni Pascoli

Giovanni Pascoli was an Italian poet and classical scholar.

Pascoli was born at San Mauro di Romagna (rechristened "San Mauro Pascoli" after his death), into a wealthy family.

He had a tragic childhood, struck by the murder of his father and the early deaths of his mother, sister and two brothers, and the subsequent economical decline of the family. The father's assassination echoes in particular in one of his most popular poems, "La cavallina storna" . His whole first work, Myricae (1891), reflects his unhappy childhood.

In 1871 he moved to Rimini with six of his brothers. Here he made friends with Andrea Costa, and began to participate in Socialist demonstrations. This led to another key event in Pascoli's life, his brief imprisonment in Bologna's jail after a protest against the capture of the anarchist Giovanni Passannante.

Pascoli studied at the University of Bologna, and his teacher and mentor was Giosuè Carducci. He graduated there in 1882, and began to teach in high schools at Matera and Massa. Here he lived next to his sisters Ida and Maria, in an attempt to renew the original family, building a "nest" (as he called it) for the sisters and himself. It is widely accepted that he never married because of an immature and somewhat ambiguous relationship with his sisters. From 1887 to 1895 he taught in Livorno.

In the meantime he began to collaborate with the magazine Vita nuova, which published the first poems later collected in Myricae. In 1894 Pascoli was called in Rome to work for the Ministry of Public Instruction, and there he published the first version of the Poemi conviviali. Later he moved to several cities such as Bologna, Florence and Messina, but remained always psychologically rooted to his original, idealized peasant origins.

In 1895 he moved, together with his sister Maria, in their house at Castelvecchio, near Barga, in Tuscany, which he had bought with money gained from literary awards. The political and social turmoil of the early 20th century, which was to lead to Italy's participation in World War I and to the advent of Fascism, further streghtened Pascoli's unsafety and pessimism.

From 1897 to 1903 he taught Latin at the University of Messina, and then at Pisa. When Carducci retired, Pascoli replaced him as the recipient of the Literature Chair at the University of Bologna. In 1912, already ill of cirrhosis (caused by his frequent use of alcohol), Giovanni Pascoli died by liver cancer.

Norman Douglas

George Norman Douglas (December 8, 1868 - February 7, 1952) was a British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel South Wind.

Norman Douglas was born in Thüringen, Austria (his surname was registered at birth as Douglass). His mother was Vanda von Poellnitz. His father was John Sholto Douglas (1845-1874), manager of a cotton mill, who died when Norman was about six. Norman was brought up mainly at Tilquhillie, Deeside, his paternal home. He was educated at Uppingham School England, and then at a grammar school in Karlsruhe. Norman's paternal grandfather was the 14th Laird of Tilquhillie. Norman's maternal great-grandfather was General James Ochoncar Forbes (1765-1843), 17th Lord Forbes.

He started in the diplomatic service in 1894 but was placed on leave in unclear circumstances. In 1897 he bought a villa in Naples. The next year he married Elizabeth Louisa Theobaldina FitzGibbon, a cousin (their mothers were sisters, daughters of Baron Ernst von Poellnitz). They had two children, but divorced in 1903 on grounds of Elizabeth's infidelity. Norman's first book publication, (Unprofessional Tales (1901)) was written under the pseudonym Normyx, in collaboration with Elizabeth.

He moved to Capri, spending time there and in London, and became a more committed writer. Nepenthe, the fictional island setting of South Wind, is Capri in light disguise. In 1912-1914 he worked for The English Review. He met D. H. Lawrence through this connection. This led to a feud, after Lawrence in 1922 in Aaron's Rod based a character on Douglas. In late 1916 he jumped bail in London on a charge of indecent assault on a sixteen year old boy, and effectively then lived in exile. He himself wrote of this in self-exculpation: 'Norman Douglas of Capri, and of Naples and Florence, was formerly of England, which he fled during the war.

During Douglas's years in Florence, he was associated with the publisher and bookseller Pino Orioli, who published in Italy in his 'Lungarno' series a number of Douglas's books and also works by other English authors, many of which (such as the first edition of Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover), would have been prosecuted for obscenity if published in London. Douglas probably had a major hand in writing Orioli's autobiography, Memoirs of a Bookseller.

Further scandals led to Douglas leaving Italy for the south of France in 1937. During World War II Douglas left France, and on a circuitous journey to London, where he lived from 1942 to 1946, he published the first edition of his 'Almanac' in a tiny edition in Lisbon. He returned to Capri, where his circle of acquaintances included the writer Graham Greene and the food writer Elizabeth David. He died in Capri, apparently deliberately overdosing himself on drugs after a long illness.

Paul Spaniola

Paul T. Spaniola, named six-time world champion pipe smoker by the The International Association of Pipe Smokers’ Clubs, Inc. In 1952, Spaniola was recruited by Twentieth Century Fox Studios to teach Susan Hayward how to smoke a pipe for the movie The President’s Lady. Spaniola who has owned Spaniola Pipe & Tobacco Company which was started in 1928 in Saginaw Michigan. Spaniola has won numerous world championships in pipe smoking, he is a man who is greatly respected and admired.

Harold Nicolson

Sir Harold George Nicolson was an English diplomat, author, diarist and politician. He was the husband of writer Vita Sackville-West, their unusual relationship being described in their son's book, Portrait of a Marriage.

Nicolson was born in Tehran, Persia, the younger son of a diplomat, Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock. He was educated at Wellington College and Balliol College, Oxford.

In 1909 he joined HM Diplomatic Service. He served as attaché at Madrid from February to September 1911, and then Third Secretary at Constantinople from January 1912 to October 1914. During the First World War, he served at the Foreign Office in London, during which time he was promoted Second Secretary. He served in a junior capacity in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, for which he was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours.

Promoted First Secretary in 1920, he was appointed private secretary to Sir Eric Drummond, first Secretary-General of the League of Nations, but was recalled to the Foreign Office in June 1920.

In 1925, he was promoted Counsellor and posted to Tehran as Chargé d'affaires. However, in Summer 1927 he was recalled to London and demoted to First Secretary for criticising his Minister, Sir Percy Loraine, in a dispatch. He was posted to Berlin as Chargé d'affaires in 1928. He was promoted Counsellor again, but resigned from the Diplomatic Service in September 1929.

From 1930 to 1931, Nicolson wrote for the Evening Standard, but found it increasingly tedious.

In 1931, he joined Sir Oswald Mosley and his recently formed New Party. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament for the Combined English Universities in the general election that year and edited the party newspaper, Action. He ceased to support Mosley when the latter formed the British Union of Fascists the following year.

Nicolson entered the House of Commons as National Labour Party Member of Parliament for Leicester West in the 1935 election. In the latter half of the 1930s he was among a relatively small number of MPs who alerted the country to the threat of Fascism. More a follower of Anthony Eden in this regard than of Winston Churchill, he nevertheless was a friend (though not an intimate) of Churchill, and often supported his efforts in the Commons to stiffen British resolve and support rearmament.

He became Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Information in Churchill's 1940 war time government of national unity, serving under Cabinet member Duff Cooper for approximately a year; thereafter he was a well-respected backbencher, especially on foreign policy issues given his early and prominent diplomatic career. From 1941 to 1946 he was also on the Board of Governors of the BBC. He lost his seat in the 1945 election. Having joined the Labour Party, he stood in the Croydon North by-election in 1948, but lost once again.

After Nicolson's last attempt to enter Parliament, he continued with an extensive social schedule and his programme of writing, which included books, book reviews, and a weekly column for The Spectator. He was appointed Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1953, as a reward for writing the official biography of George V, which had been published in the previous year.

Franchot Tone

Franchot Tone was an American actor.

He was born Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone in Niagara Falls, New York, the youngest son of Dr. Frank Jerome Tone, the president of the Carborundum Company, and his wife, Gertrude Van Vrancken Franchot. He was of French Canadian, Irish, English and Basque ancestry.

Tone attended Cornell University, where he was President of the drama club and was elected to the Sphinx Head Society. He gave up the family business to pursue an acting career in the theatre. After graduating, he moved to Greenwich Village, New York, and got his first Broadway role in the 1929 Katharine Cornell production of The Age of Innocence.

The following year, he joined the Theatre Guild and played Curly in their production of Green Grow the Lilacs (later to become the famous musical Oklahoma!). He later became a founding member of the famed Group Theatre, together with Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Clifford Odets, and others, many of whom had worked with the Theatre Guild. Strasberg had been a castmate of Tone's in Green Grow the Lilacs. These were intense and productive years for him: among the productions of the Group he acted in were 1931 (1931) and Success Story (1932). Franchot Tone was universally regarded by the critics as one of the most promising actors of his generation. Gary Cooper called Tone the best actor he had ever worked with.

The same year, however, Tone was the first of the Group to turn his back on the theatre and go to Hollywood when MGM offered him a film contract. In his memoir on the Group Theatre, The Fervent Years, Harold Clurman recalls Tone as the most confrontational and egocentric of the group in the beginning. Nevertheless, he always considered cinema far inferior to the theatre and recalled his stage years with longing. He often sent financial support to the Group Theatre, which often needed it. He eventually returned to the stage from time to time after the 1940s. His screen debut was in the 1932 movie The Wiser Sex. He achieved fame in 1933, when he made seven movies that year, including Today We Live, written by William Faulkner, where he first met his future wife Joan Crawford, Bombshell, with Jean Harlow (with whom he co-starred in three other movies), and the smash hit Dancing Lady, again with Crawford and Clark Gable. In 1935, probably his best year, he starred in Mutiny on the Bounty (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor), The Lives of a Bengal Lancer and Dangerous opposite Bette Davis, with whom he was rumored to have had an affair.

He worked steadily through the 1940s without breaking through as a major star. He was beginning to be type-cast as the wealthy cafe-society playboy and very few of the films of this period are notable. One conspicuous exception was Five Graves to Cairo (1943), the third film by the young Billy Wilder; a World War II espionage story starring Tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff and Erich von Stroheim as German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

In the 1950s, he moved to television and returned to Broadway. In 1957, he appeared on Broadway in A Moon for the Misbegotten with Wendy Hiller. In 1962, he appeared as Leo Haynes in the episode "Along About Late in the Afternoon" of the NBC medical drama about psychiatry, The Eleventh Hour. He co-starred in the Ben Casey medical series from 1965 to 1966 as Casey's supervisor, Robert Ashton. He also starred in, directed, and produced his first film, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (1957) with then wife Dolores Dorn. He appeared as a disheartened traveling preacher named "Malachi Hobart" in an early episode of NBC's Wagon Train.

Tone's final movie appearance was in the 1965 Otto Preminger film "In Harm's Way" starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas. He is identified as "CINCPAC I" (Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, USN at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack) in the film credits.

A chain smoker, Tone died of lung cancer in New York City at the age of 63.

Norman Davis

Norman Davis was a U.S. diplomat. He was born in Bedford, Tennessee. He served as President Wilson's Assistant Secretary of Treasury and later as Undersecretary of State. He was a delegate to a General Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1931. He was chairman of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies from 1938 to 1944 and president of the Council on Foreign Relations 1936-1944.

In 1939, following the outbreak of war in Europe, Davis chaired the steering committee of the Council on Foreign Relations' War and Peace Studies project, created to advise the U.S. Government on wartime policy. He would also join the State Department's committee on overseas war measures, the fifteen-member Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations.

William Gropper

William Victor Gropper, aka Samuel Gropper, was a U.S. cartoonist, painter, lithographer, and muralist.

Born in New York City, he studied art at the Ferrer School and at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, under George Bellows and Robert Henri.

Gropper died from a myocardial infarction at Manhasset, New York, at the age of 79.

Samuel Fuller

Samuel Fuller was an American screenwriter and film director known for low-budget genre movies with controversial themes.

He was born Samuel Michael Fuller in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Rabinovitch, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and Rebecca Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. After immigrating to America, the family's surname was changed to "Fuller". At the age of 12, he began working in journalism as a newspaper copyboy. He became a crime reporter in New York City at age 17, working for the New York Evening Graphic. He wrote pulp novels and screenplays from the mid-1930s onwards.

During World War II, Fuller joined the United States Army infantry. He was assigned to the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and saw heavy fighting. He was involved in landings in Africa, Sicily, and Normandy and also saw action in Belgium and Czechoslovakia. In 1945 he was present at the liberation of the German concentration camp at Falkenau and shot 16 mm footage which was used later in the documenatary Falkenau: The Impossible. For his service, he was awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart. Fuller used his wartime experiences as material in his films, especially in The Big Red One (1980), a nickname of the 1st Infantry Division.

After his controversial film White Dog was shelved by Paramount pictures, Fuller moved to France, and never directed another American film. Fuller eventually returned to America. He died of natural causes in his California home. In November 1997, the Directors Guild held a three hour memorial in his honor, hosted by Curtis Hanson, his long time friend and co-writer on White Dog. He was survived by his wife Christa and daughter Samantha.

Harry Baur

Harry Baur was a French actor. He was killed by the Gestapo in Paris on April 8, 1943.

Baur gave an acclaimed performance as the composer Ludwig van Beethoven in Abel Gance's 1936 biopic Un grand amour de Beethoven (Beethoven's Great Love), and as Jean Valjean in Raymond Bernard's version of Les Misérables (1934). He also acted in Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset's 1909 silent film, Beethoven, among nearly 80 other films between 1909 and 1942.

Tom Crean

Tom Crean was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer from County Kerry. He left the family farm near Annascaul to enlist in the British Royal Navy at the age of 15. In 1901, while serving on HMS Ringarooma in New Zealand, he volunteered to join Robert Falcon Scott's 1901–04 British National Antarctic Expedition on Discovery, thus beginning a distinguished career as an explorer during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Crean was a member of three of the four major British expeditions to Antarctica during this period. After the Discovery Expedition he joined Captain Scott's 1911–13 Terra Nova Expedition, which saw the race to reach the South Pole lost to Roald Amundsen, and ended in the deaths of Scott and his polar party. During this expedition Crean's 35-mile (56 km) solo walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans led to him receiving the Albert Medal. His third Antarctic venture was the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition on Endurance led by Ernest Shackleton, in which he served as Second Officer. After Endurance became beset in the pack ice and sank, he was a participant in a dramatic series of events including months spent drifting on the ice, a journey in lifeboats to Elephant Island, and an open boat journey of 800 nautical miles (920 statute miles, 1,500 km) from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Upon reaching South Georgia, Crean was one of the party of three which undertook the first land crossing of the island, without maps or proper mountaineering equipment.

His contributions to these expeditions earned him three Polar Medals, and a reputation as a tough and dependable polar traveller. After the Endurance expedition Crean returned to the Navy, and when his naval career ended in 1920 he moved back to County Kerry. In his home town of Annascaul, he and his wife Ellen opened a public house called the "South Pole Inn". He lived there quietly and unobtrusively until his death in 1938.

Theodore Maynard

Theodore Maynard was an English poet, literary critic, and historian. He grew up in England until 1920, and afterwards he moved to America and lived there until his death. Although he considered himself primarily a poet, during his lifetime he was best known and most influential as an historian of Roman Catholicism, especially in the United States.

Aleksander Rodchenko

Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova.

Rodchenko was one of the most versatile Constructivist and Productivist artists to emerge after the Russian Revolution. He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage and photography. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles—usually high above or below—to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition. He wrote: "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again."

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg to a working class family. His family moved to Kazan in 1909, after the death of his father at which point he studied at the Kazan School of Art under Nikolai Feshin and Georgii Medvedev, and at the Stroganov Institute in Moscow. He made his first abstract drawings, influenced by the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich, in 1915. The following year, he participated in "The Store" exhibition organized by Vladimir Tatlin, who was another formative influence in his development as an artist.

Rodchenko was appointed Director of the Museum Bureau and Purchasing Fund by the Bolshevik Government in 1920. He was responsible for the reorganization of art schools and museums. He taught from 1920 to 1930 at the Higher Technical-Artistic Studios (VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN).

In 1921 he became a member of the Productivist group, which advocated the incorporation of art into everyday life. He gave up painting in order to concentrate on graphic design for posters, books, and films. He was deeply influenced by the ideas and practice of the filmmaker Dziga Vertov, with whom he worked intensively in 1922.

Impressed by the photomontage of the German Dadaists, Rodchenko began his own experiments in the medium, first employing found images in 1923, and from 1924 on shooting his own photographs as well. His first published photomontage illustrated Mayakovsky's poem, "About This," in 1923.

From 1923 to 1928 Rodchenko collaborated closely with Mayakovsky (of whom he took several striking portraits) on the design and layout of LEF and Novy LEF, the publications of Constructivist artists. Many of his photographs appeared in or were used as covers for these journals. His images eliminated unnecessary detail, emphasized dynamic diagonal composition, and were concerned with the placement and movement of objects in space.

Throughout the 1920s Rodchenko's work was abstract often to the point of being non-figurative. In the 1930s, with the changing Party guidelines governing artistic practice, he concentrated on sports photography and images of parades and other choreographed movements.

Rodchenko joined the October circle of artists in 1928 but was expelled three years later being charged with "formalism." He returned to painting in the late 1930s, stopped photographing in 1942, and produced abstract expressionist works in the 1940s. He continued to organize photography exhibitions for the government during these years. He died in Moscow in 1956.

Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher

Frank Jack Fletcher was an admiral in the United States Navy during World War II. Fletcher was the operational commander at the pivotal Battles of Coral Sea and of Midway. He was the nephew of Admiral Frank Friday Fletcher.

Fletcher was born in Marshalltown, Iowa on April 29, 1885. Appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy from his native state in 1902, he graduated from Annapolis on February 12, 1906 and commissioned an Ensign on February 13, 1908 following two years at sea.

The early years of his career were spent on the battleships Rhode Island, Ohio, and Maine. He also spent time on USS Eagle and USS Franklin. In November 1909 he was assigned to USS Chauncey, a unit of the Asiatic Torpedo Flotilla. He assumed command of USS Dale in April 1910 and March 1912 returned to Chauncey as Commanding Officer. Transferred to USS Florida in December 1912 he was aboard that battleship during the United States occupation of Veracruz, Mexico, in April 1914. For distinguished conduct in battle at Veracruz he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Fletcher became Aide and Flag Lieutenant on the staff of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet in July 1914. After a year at this post, he returned to the Naval Academy for duty in the Executive Department. Upon the outbreak of World War I he served as Gunnery Officer of USS Kearsarge until September 1917, after which he assumed command of USS Margaret. He was assigned to USS Allen in February 1918 before taking command of USS Benham in May 1918. For distinguished service as Commanding Officer USS Benham, engaged in the important, exacting, and hazardous duty of patrolling European waters and protecting vitally important convoys, he was awarded the Navy Cross.

From October 1918 to February 1919 he assisted in fitting out USS Crane at San Francisco. He then became Commanding Officer of USS Gridley upon her commissioning. Returning to Washington, he was head of the Detail Section, Enlisted Personnel Division in the Bureau of Navigation from April 1919 until September 1922.

He returned to the Asiatic Station, having consecutive command of the USS Whipple, USS Sacramento, USS Rainbow, and Submarine Base, Cavite. He served at the Washington Navy Yards from March 1925 to 1927; became Executive Officer of USS Colorado; and completed the Senior Course at the Naval War College, Newport in June 1930.

Fletcher became Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet in August 1931. In the summer of 1933 he was transferred to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Following this assignment he had duty from November 1933 to May 1936 as Aide to the Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Claude A. Swanson. He assumed command of USS New Mexico, flagship of Battleship Division THREE in June 1936. In December 1937 he became a member of the Naval Examining Board, and became Assistant Chief of Bureau of Navigation in June 1938. Returning to the Pacific between September 1939 and December 1941 he became Commander Cruiser Division THREE; Commander Cruiser Division SIX; Commander Cruiser's Scouting Force; and Commander Cruiser Division FOUR.

On January 1, 1942, Rear Admiral Fletcher took command of Task Force 17 built around the carrier USS Yorktown (CV-5). He, a surface fleet admiral, was chosen over more senior officers to lead a carrier task force. He learned air operations on the job while escorting troops to the South Pacific. He was junior TF commander under tutelage of the experts: Vice Admiral William Halsey during the Marshalls-Gilberts raids in February; Vice Admiral Wilson Brown attacking the enemy landings on New Guinea in March; and had aviation expert Rear Admiral Aubrey Fitch with him during the first battle at Coral Sea.

In May 1942, he commanded the task forces during the Battle of the Coral Sea. This battle is famous as the first carrier-on-carrier battle fought between fleets that never came within sight of each other.

Fletcher with Yorktown, Task Force 17, had been patrolling the Coral Sea and rendezvoused with Rear Admiral Aubrey Fitch with USS Lexington (CV-2), Task Force 11, and a tanker group. Fletcher finished refueling first and headed West. On hearing the enemy was occupying Tulagi, TF 17 attacked the landing beaches, sinking several small ships before rejoining Lexington and an Australian cruiser force under Rear Admiral John Gregory Crace on May 5.

The next day, intelligence reported a Japanese invasion task force headed for Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and a Carrier Strike Force was in the area, The morning of May 7 Fletcher sent the Australian cruisers to stop the transports while he sought the carriers. His combat pilots sank Japanese aircraft carrier Shōhō, escorting the enemy troop ships, — "Scratch one flat top." radioed Lt. Commander Robert Dixon flying back to the USS Lexington. Meanwhile, Japanese carrier planes of Rear Admiral Chuichi Hara found the American tanker USS Neosho (AO-23), and severely damaged (days later sunk by USS Henley (DD-391) it after several all-out attacks, believing they had found a carrier, and sinking her escorting destroyer USS Sims (DD-409).

On May 8, at first light, "round three opened." Fletcher launched seventy-five aircraft, Hara sixty-nine. Fitch had greater experience in handling air operations, and Fletcher had him direct that function, as he was to do again later with Noyes at Guadalcanal. Shokaku was hit, but not damaged below waterline; it slunk away. Zuikaku had earlier dodged under a squall. The Japanese attack put two torpedoes into Lexington, which was abandoned that evening. Yorktown was hit near her island, but survived. Hara failed to use Zuikaku to achieve victory and withdrew. The invasion fleet without air cover, also withdrew, thereby halting the Port Moresby invasion. Fletcher had achieved the objective of the mission at the cost of a carrier, tanker, and destroyer. In addition, his Wildcats had beaten Japanese air groups, 52 to 35, and had damaged Shokaku,; neither Japanese carrier would be able to join the fight at Midway the following month.

This was the first WWII battle in which the Imperial Japanese Navy had been stopped. In battles in Pearl Harbor, East Indies, Australia, Ceylon they had defeated the British, Dutch, and Asiatic Fleets, and had not lost a fleet ship larger than mine sweepers and submarines.

In June 1942, he was the Officer in Tactical Command at the Battle of Midway with two task forces, his usual TF 17 with quickly repaired Yorktown, plus TF 16 with USS Enterprise and USS Hornet. Vice Admiral William Halsey normally commanded this task force, but became ill and was replaced by Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance. When aircraft from four Japanese carriers attacked Midway Island, the three U.S. carriers, warned by broken Japanese codes and waiting in ambush, attacked and sank three enemy carriers – Akagi, Kaga, Soryu. Enterprise and Hornet lost seventy aircraft. Return attack damaged Yorktown. Fletcher's scouts found the fourth carrier and Enterprise with Yorktown planes then sank Hiryu. At dusk, Fletcher released Spruance to continue fighting with TF 16 the next day. During the next two days, Spruance found two damaged cruisers and sank one. The enemy transport and battle fleets got away. A Japanese submarine, I-168, found crippled Yorktown and sank her and an adjacent destroyer, USS Hammann. Japan had had seven large carriers (six at Pearl Harbor and one new construction) – four were sunk at Midway. This did not win the war, but evened the odds between Japanese and American fleet carriers.

As the U.S. took the offensive in August 1942, Vice Admiral Fletcher commanded the Task Force 61's invasion of Tulagi and Guadalcanal by the 1st Marine Division. Close air support was provided at Tulagi. The invasion of Guadalcanal was uncontested, Fletcher withdrew his carriers from dangerous waters when they were no longer needed. Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner's offloading of supplies did not go as well as expected, he did not tell Fletcher, and then had to withdraw the transports after Fletcher left. The Marines refer to this as the 'Navy Bugout', but the 17,000 Marines were in little danger from a construction battalion. The few US carriers could not be risked against multi-engine, land based, torpedo bombers, when they were needed for combat against carriers. He chose to withdraw on the third morning to prepare for the inevitable Japanese counterattack.

Fletcher used the carriers he had saved two weeks later when he fought a superior Japanese fleet intent on counter-invasion in the carrier aircraft Battle of the Eastern Solomons. He started the engagement and sank his sixth carrier, Ryujo, The ensuing battle was essentially a giant aerial dog fight interspersed with ship borne antiaircraft fire. The U.S. lost 20 planes, the Japanese lost 70. Enterprise was hit by three bombs and Chitose was nearly sunk, but survived. The enemy withdrew without landing troops on Guadalcanal. They had to resort to the Tokyo Express : overnight delivery of a few hundred troops and supplies by destroyers. Fletcher, as always, was second guessed by non-combatants, and was criticized by Admiral Ernest King, in Washington, for not pursuing the Combined Fleet as it withdrew. This criticism may have affected the decision to not return Fletcher to his command after his flagship, the carrier Saratoga (CV-3), was torpedoed and damaged by a Japanese submarine on August 31, 1942. Fletcher himself was slightly injured in the attack on Saratoga, suffering a gash to his head and was given his first leave after eight months of continuous combat.

In November 1942, he became Commander, Thirteenth Naval District and Commander, Northwestern Sea Frontier to calm the public fear of invasion from the north. A year later, he was placed in charge of the whole Northern Pacific area, holding that position until after the end of World War II, when his forces occupied northern Japan. He also held that command when he ordered the front to bombard the Kurile Islands and other operations as well.

Vice Admiral Fletcher was appointed to the Navy's General Board in 1946 and retired as Chairman of that governing board in May 1947 with the rank of full Admiral. He retired to his county estate, Araby, in Maryland.

Many of Fletcher's papers were lost in combat, he declined to reconstruct his papers from Pentagon archives and sit with Samuel Eliot Morison, who was writing the History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, and in return received no consideration by Morison, an attitude picked up by later authors.

Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher died on April 25, 1973, four days before his 88th birthday at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Herbert Wehner

Herbert Richard Wehner was a German politician.

Herbert Wehner was born in Dresden. His father was active in his labor union and a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). More radical than his father, Wehner joined the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1927. He was elected to the state legislature of Saxony in 1930. After Hitler came to power in 1933, he participated in the communist resistance against the National Socialist (Nazi) regime. In 1935 he went into exile in Moscow. After being sent to Sweden on party business in 1941, he was arrested and interned in 1942.

Upon his return to Germany in 1946, Wehner joined the Social Democratic Party. In 1949 he became a member of the Bundestag (the German parliament) and remained an elected member until his retirement from politics in 1983. Wehner was instrumental in the SPD's adoption of the Godesberg Program in which the party repudiated a fixation on Marxist ideology and broadened its appeal. In 1966 he was named Federal Minister for All-German Affairs in the CDU–SPD coalition government of Kurt Kiesinger. When the SPD assumed the reins of government under Willy Brandt, Wehner became chairman of the SPD parliamentary fraction. He was known as a hard disciplinarian who kept his members in line.

During his tenure in the Bundestag Wehner became famous (or infamous) for his heckling style, often hurling personal insults at members with whom he disagreed. He holds the record for official censures handed down by the presiding officer.

Wehner died in 1990 in Bonn, Germany after a long illness.

George Adamson

George Adamson, the "Baba ya Simba" ("Father of Lions"in Swahili language) of Africa, was one of the founding fathers of wildlife conservation and an author. He and his wife Joy Adamson are best known through the book and film Born Free, which is based on the true story of Elsa, an orphaned lioness cub they raised and later released into the wild.

Adamson was born in Dholpur, Rajasthan, India (then British India). He first visited Kenya in 1924. After a series of adventures, which included time as a gold prospector, goat trader, and professional safari hunter, he joined Kenya's game department in 1938 and was Senior Game Warden of the Northern Frontier District. Six years later he married Joy. It was in 1956 that he came to have Elsa the lioness who would gain world fame and affection.

George Adamson retired as a game warden in 1961 and devoted himself to his many lions. In 1970, he moved to the Kora National Reserve in northern Kenya to continue the rehabilitation of captive or orphaned big cats for eventual reintroduction into the wild. George and Joy separated in 1970, but continued to spend Christmas together until she was murdered on January 3rd, 1980.

On 20 August 1989, the 83-year-old Adamson was shot to death at Kora Reserve by Somalian bandits when he went to the aid of a tourist. He is buried at the reserve next to the lion Boy.

Ian Anderson

Ian Scott Anderson is a Scottish singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, best known for his work as the head of British rock band Jethro Tull.

Ian Anderson's father ran the RSA Boiler Fluid Company in East Port, Dunfermline. He spent the first part of his childhood in Edinburgh, where he went to Roseburn Primary School from 1953 to 1958. Edinburgh was an influence that has dominated his artistic output ever since. He would return much later in life to live in Scotland for several years.

His family moved to Blackpool in the North West of England in 1959, where he gained a traditional education at Blackpool Grammar School, before going on to study fine art at Blackpool College of Art from 1964 to 1966. Much of his work referring to this period suggests a somewhat turbulent upbringing.

While a teenager, Anderson took a job as a sales assistant at Lewis' department store in Blackpool, then as a vendor on a newsstand. He later said it was reading copies of Melody Maker and the New Musical Express during his lunch breaks that gave him the inspiration to play in a band.

In 1963, he formed The Blades from among school friends: Barriemore Barlow (drums), John Evan (keyboards), Jeffrey Hammond (bass) and Michael Stephens (guitar). This was a soul and blues band, with Anderson on vocals and harmonica - he had yet to take up the flute.

By 1965, the group had turned into the John Evan Smash, comprising a larger line-up. It broke up within a couple of years, by which time Anderson had moved to Luton. There he met drummer Clive Bunker and guitarist and fellow vocalist Mick Abrahams from fellow blues band McGregor's Engine. Along with Glenn Cornick, a bassist he had met through John Evan, he created the first incarnation of the band with which he was to stay for over 40 years: Jethro Tull.

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull at London's Hammersmith Odeon, March 1978At this time Anderson abandoned his ambition to play electric guitar, allegedly because he felt he would never be "as good as Eric Clapton". As he himself tells it in the introduction to the video "Live at the Isle of Wight", he traded his electric guitar in for a flute which, after some weeks of practice, he found he could play fairly well in a rock and blues style. According to the sleeve notes for the first Tull album, "This Was", he had been playing the flute only a few months when the album was recorded. His guitar practice was not wasted either, as he continued to play acoustic guitar, using it as a melodic as well as rhythmic instrument. As his career progressed, he added soprano saxophone, mandolin, keyboards and other instruments to his arsenal.

His famous tendency to stand on one leg while playing the flute came about by accident. As related in the "Isle of Wight" video, he had been inclined to stand on one leg while playing the harmonica, holding the microphone stand for balance. During the long stint at the Marquee Club, a journalist described him, wrongly, as standing on one leg to play the flute. He decided to live up to the reputation, albeit with some difficulty. His early attempts are visible in the "Rock and Roll Circus" film appearance of Jethro Tull. In later life he was surprised to learn of iconic portrayals of various flute playing divinities, particularly Krishna and Kokopelli, which show them standing on one leg.

While Anderson has recorded a small number of critically-acclaimed projects under his own name, and frequently makes guest appearances in other artists' work, he has been identified in the public eye as the frontman of Jethro Tull for 40 years.

This is undoubtedly because a signature motif of Anderson's career has been a highly distinctive stage image, which has often been counter to the prevailing rock music culture. While he has habitually drawn inspiration from British folklore - at different times deploying stylistic elements of Medieval jester, Elizabethan minstrel, English country squire and Scottish laird - at other times he has appeared as astronaut, biker, pirate and vagrant. His personae often involve a large degree of self-parody.

As a flautist, Anderson is self-taught; his style, which often includes a good deal of flutter tonguing and occasionally singing or humming (or even snorting) while playing, was influenced by Roland Kirk. In 2003 he recorded a composition called Griminelli's Lament in honour of his friend, the Italian flautist Andrea Griminelli. In the 1990s he began working with simple bamboo flutes. He uses techniques such as over-blowing and hole-shading to produce note-slurring and other expressive techniques on this otherwise simple instrument.

Anderson plays several other musical instruments, including acoustic and electric guitar, bass, bouzouki, balalaika, saxophone, harmonica, and a variety of whistles.

He has recorded several songs on which he plays all the instruments as well as carrying out all the engineering and production (such as 1988's "Another Christmas Song"). His earliest foray into one-man recording was apparently on the popular Tull piece "Locomotive Breath". Unable to get his ideas across to the rest of the band verbally, he laid down percussion and guitar tracks himself before adding vocals and then bringing in the others, at a time when tracks were usually recorded with all band members in the studio. Ironically this is one of the most vital pieces on the 1971 Aqualung album and is a mainstay of Tull's stage show.

Anderson's music blends styles such as folk, jazz, blues, rock and pop. His lyrics are frequently complex, (mostly) tongue-in-cheek criticism of the absurd rules of society and/or religion ("Sossity, You're a Woman"; "Hymn 43"; "Thick as a Brick"). He often combines lyrics with other leitmotifs such as folk, mythological, fantastic ("The Minstrel in the Gallery", "Jack-in-the-Green", "Broadsword and the Beast"). In the 1990s and 2000s, Anderson's songs often capture 'snapshots' of his daily life ("Old Black Cat", "Rocks on the Road").

In recognition of his life-long contribution to popular music, Anderson received two honours in 2006: the Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement and an honorary Doctorate of Literature at Heriot-Watt University, on 11 July 2006.

He remains widely regarded as the man who introduced the flute to rock music, and the only one who uses it as his main instrument. He is also considered the first rock musician to utilize a a classical orchestral instrument and develop music to use it as a lead instrument. Other flute players to gain recognition now include Walter Parazaider of Chicago, Burton Cummings of The Guess Who, Ian McDonald of King Crimson, Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues, Thijs van Leer of Focus, Chris Wood of Traffic, Andrew Latimer of Camel, Jerry Eubanks of The Marshall Tucker Band and Peter Gabriel during his years with Genesis, however none but Gabriel and Wood gained anything close to the amount of recognition utilizing the instrument.

Irving Fields

Irving Fields is an American pianist and lounge music artist who was born in New York City, New York.

Some of his most noteworthy compositions include "Miami Beach Rhumba", "Managua, Nicaragua" and "Chantez, Chantez," covered by Dinah Shore in the 1940s.

Irving Fields' most famous album is Bagels and Bongos, a Jewish-inflected Latin jazz recording that sold 2 million copies after its release in 1959. He also recorded Bikinis and Bongos, dedicated to Hawaiian music, and Pizzas and Bongos, inspired by Italian rhythms.

At 93 years-old, Irving Fields is still making personal appearances. He also recently wrote a theme song for YouTube.

Irving Fields currently plays six nights a week at Nino's Tuscany, an Italian restaurant on W. 58th Street between 6th and 7th Ave. in New York. Previous to his position at Nino's Tuscany, Mr. Fields performed at the East River Cafe, a Mediterranean restaurant located on First Avenue and E. 61st Street. Upon leaving, he transferred the job to his protege, Albert Aprigliano, who considers Irving Fields to be his mentor.

Sparky Anderson

George Lee "Sparky" Anderson is a former Major League Baseball manager. He managed the National League's Cincinnati Reds to the 1975 and 1976 championships, then added a third title in 1984 with the Detroit Tigers of the American League.

Anderson has resided for many years in Thousand Oaks, California. He was known as "Sparky" during his time in baseball, but in private life goes by his given name of "George". Anderson is famous for his superstition of not walking on the foul lines on the baseball field. His superstition was so great that he used to nearly trip on the field to avoid walking on the foul lines, as if he would trip on them.

Anderson was a "good field, no-hit" middle infielder as a player. After playing the 1955 season with the Texas League Fort Worth Cats as an apprenticeship in the farm system of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he played one full season in the major leagues, as the regular second baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1959. However, a .218 average with no power ended his big-league career at that point.

He played the next four seasons with the Triple-A Toronto Maple Leafs in the International League, but never got a second chance in the majors. Finally, in 1964, Anderson moved into the manager's job in Toronto and later handled minor league clubs at the A and Double-A levels, including a season (1968) in the Reds' minor league system.

During this period, he managed a pennant winner in four consecutive seasons: 1965 with the Rock Hill Cardinals of the Western Carolinas League, 1966 with the St. Petersburg Cardinals of the Florida State League, 1967 with the Modesto Reds of the California League and 1968 with the Asheville Tourists of the Southern League. It was during the 1966 season that Sparky's club lost to Miami 4-3 in 29 innings, which remains the longest pro game played (by innings) without interruption.

He made his way back to the majors in 1969 as a coach for the San Diego Padres. He was briefly a member of the California Angels coaching staff during the 1969-70 offseason, but within days of being hired in Anaheim, he was offered the opportunity to succeed Dave Bristol as manager of the Reds. His appointment reunited Anderson with Reds' general manager Bob Howsam, who had hired him as a minor-league skipper in the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati organizations.

Anderson won 102 games and the pennant in his first Major League season as manager, but then lost the World Series in five games to the Baltimore Orioles. After an injury-plagued 1971 season, the Reds came back and won another pennant in 1972, but lost to the Oakland Athletics in the World Series. They took the National League West division title in 1973, then finished a close second to the Los Angeles Dodgers a year later.

Finally, in 1975, the Reds blew the division open by winning 108 games, swept the National League Championship Series and then edged the Boston Red Sox in a drama-filled, seven-game World Series. They repeated in 1976 by winning 102 games and ultimately sweeping the New York Yankees in the Series. Over the course of these two seasons, Anderson's Reds compiled an astounding 14-3 record in postseason play against the Pirates, Philles, Red Sox and Yankees, winning their last 8 in a row in the postseason after triumphing against the Red Sox in Game 7 of the 1975 World Series, and then winning seven straight games in the 1976 postseason.

During this time, Anderson became known as "Captain Hook" for his penchant for taking out a starting pitcher at the first sign of weakness and going to his bullpen, relying heavily on closers Will McEnaney and Rawly Eastwick.

When the aging Reds finished second to the Dodgers in each of the next two seasons, Anderson was fired. The Reds won the division title again in 1979 but lost three straight to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the League Championship Series. They would not make the playoffs again until they won the World Series in 1990 by sweeping the heavily favored Oakland A's.

Anderson moved on to the young Detroit Tigers after being hired as their new manager on June 14, 1979. The Tigers became a winning club almost immediately, but did not get into contention until 1983, when they finished second to the Baltimore Orioles.

In 1984, Detroit opened the season 35-5 (a major league record) and breezed to a 104-58 record (a franchise record for wins). They swept the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series (ALCS) and then beat the San Diego Padres in five games in the World Series for Anderson's third world title. After the season, Anderson won the first of his two Manager of the Year Awards with the Tigers.

Anderson became the first manager to win a World Series for both a National League and American League team. Either manager in the 1984 Series would have been the first to win in both leagues, since San Diego Padres (NL) manager Dick Williams had previously won the series with the Oakland Athletics (AL) in 1972 and 1973. Anderson's accomplishment was equalled in the 2006 World Series, when St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa — who had previously won the World Series with the Oakland Athletics in 1989, and who considers Anderson his mentor — led his team to the title over the Detroit Tigers. Coincidentally, having won a championship while managing the Florida Marlins in 1997, Tigers manager Jim Leyland could have achieved this same feat had the Tigers defeated La Russa's Cardinals in the 2006 World Series.

With a 9-5 win over the Milwaukee Brewers on July 29, 1986 Anderson became the first to achieve 600 career wins as a manager in both the American and National Leagues.

Anderson led the Tigers to the majors' best record in 1987, but the team was upset in the ALCS by the Minnesota Twins. He won his second Manager of the Year Award that year. After contending again in 1988 (finishing second to Boston by one game in the AL East), the team collapsed a year later, losing a startling 103 games. During that 1989 season, Anderson took a month-long leave of absence from the team as the stress of losing wore on him. First base coach Dick Tracewski managed the team in the interim.

In 1991, the Tigers finished last in batting average, first in batting strike outs and near the bottom of the league in most pitching categories, but still led their division in late August before settling for a second-place finish behind the rival Toronto. The team featured a power-packed lineup of sluggers Cecil Fielder, Mickey Tettleton, and Rob Deer, which led the league in home runs and walks that season.

During his managerial career, Anderson was known to heap lavish (and often times undeserved and unfair) praise on his ballplayers when talking to the media. He declared Kirk Gibson "the next Mickey Mantle", which he later acknowledged may have put too much pressure on Gibson early in his career. He said Mike Laga, who played for him in 1984, would "make us forget every power hitter who ever lived." He also said, "Johnny Bench (who played for him in Cincinnati) will never throw a baseball as hard as Mike Heath (a catcher who played for him in Detroit)."

Anderson retired from managing after the 1995 season, reportedly disillusioned with the state of the league following the 1994 strike that had also truncated the beginning of the 1995 season. It is widely believed that Anderson was pushed into retirement by the Tigers, who were unhappy that Sparky refused to manage replacement players during spring training in 1995. He finished with a lifetime record of 2194-1834, for a .545 percentage. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame as a manager in 2000. His Hall of Fame plaque has him wearing a Cincinnati Reds uniform. He spent the larger portion of his career managing the Tigers (1970-78 with the Reds, 1979-95 with the Tigers), but he won two World Series with the Reds and one with the Tigers. He chose to wear the Reds cap at his induction in honor of former GM Bob Howsam, who gave Anderson his first chance at a major-league managing job. Anderson was also inducted into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame the same year. A day in his honor was also held at Detroit's Comerica Park during the 2000 season.

On May 28, 2005, during pre-game ceremonies in Cincinnati, Anderson's jersey number, 10, was retired by the Reds. Anderson's number in Detroit, 11, has been inactive since 1995. However, it has not been officially retired by the Tigers.

In 2006, construction was completed on the "Sparky Anderson Baseball Field" at California Lutheran University's new athletic complex. In 2007, Anderson was elected to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.

Enzo Bearzot

Enzo Bearzot is a former Italian football player and manager. He is mostly renowned for having led the Italy national football team to a triumph in the 1982 FIFA World Cup.

A centre back, Bearzot did not enjoy a particularly successful playing career. He made his debut in professional football with Pro Gorizia in 1946, and then played also for Inter Milan, Catania and Torino, being capped only one time for the national team.
After having ended his playing career in 1964, Bearzot became assistant coach of Torino, working with Nereo Rocco and Giovan Battista Fabbri, then debutting as head coach for Prato of Serie C. However, Bearzot did not go on a club career, and instead started working for the Italian Football Federation, first as under-23 head coach, then as assistant coach of Ferruccio Valcareggi in the 1974 FIFA World Cup. After the German World Cup, Bearzot was appointed as vice-coach of Fulvio Bernardini, and was then promoted as head coach of Italy in 1977. It was Bearzot who drove the national team to a good fourth place in the 1978 FIFA World Cup, obtained thanks to one of the most exciting playing styles in the competition. Bearzot repeated himself in the Euro 1980, hosted by Italy.

In the 1982 FIFA World Cup, after three poor ties in the three first matches, Bearzot announced the so-called silenzio stampa (press silence) in order to avoid the raising critics from the Italian press. Following that, the Italian team finally started to play its best football, defeating teams such as Argentina, Brazil in the second round, and winning the semi-final to Poland. In the end, Bearzot won even the final match against Germany, leading his team to the first World Cup since 1938. One of the widely remembered pictures of that adventure is probably the game which saw Enzo Bearzot playing scopone with Dino Zoff, Franco Causio and the Italian President Sandro Pertini.

Italy and Bearzot did not qualify for the Euro 1984. Bearzot resigned after the 1986 FIFA World Cup, which saw Italy being defeated in the round of 16 against France.

After a long period of inactivity, Bearzot was appointed President of the FIGC Technical Sector (Settore Tecnico, the main football coaching organization of Italy) in 2002. He left this office in 2005.

Bert Hardy

Bert Hardy was a documentary and press photographer known for his work published in the Picture Post magazine between 1941 and 1957.

Bert Hardy rose from humble working class origins in Blackfriars, the eldest of seven children he left school at age 14 to work for a chemist who also processed photos. His first big sale came when he photographed King George V and Queen Mary in a passing carriage, and sold 200 small prints of his best view of the King. Hardy freelanced for The Bicycle magazine, and bought his first small-format Leica 35 mm. He signed on with the General Photographic Agency as a photographer, then found his own freelance firm Criterion.

In 1941 Hardy was recruited by the editor Tom Hopkinson of the leading picture publication of the 1930s and 1940s, Picture Post. Hardy was self-taught and used a Leica - unconventional for press photographers at that time - but went on to become the Post's Chief Photographer, after he earned its first photographer credit for his 1 February 1941 photo-essay about Blitz-stressed fire-fighters.

Hardy served as a war photographer in the Royal Army Photographic Unit from 1942 until 1946: he took part in the D-Day landings in June 1944; covered the liberation of Paris; the allied advance across the Rhine; and was one of the first photographers to enter the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to record the suffering there. He also saved some Russian slaves from a fire set by German police in the city of Osnabruck, before photographing the aftermath.

Near the end of WWII, Hardy went to Asia, where he became Lord Mountbatten's personal photographer. He later went on the cover the Korean War along with journalist James Cameron for Picture Post, reporting on United Nations atrocities at Pusan in 1950 and on that war's turning point, the Battle of Inchon, for which he won the Missouri Pictures of the Year Award.

Three of Hardy's photos were used in Edward Steichen's famous "Family of Man" exhibition and book, though not his favorite photo - which shows two street urchins off on a lark in Gorbals - it nevertheless has come to represent Hardy's documentary skill. Hardy himself was photographed many times, including in war-time; but three very good photo-portraits of him are currently in the Photographs Collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

Having written an article for amateur photographers suggesting you didn't need an expensive camera to take good pictures, Hardy staged a carefully posed photograph of two young women sitting on railings above a breezy Blackpool promenade using a Box Brownie.

Just before Picture Post closed, Hardy took 15 photos of Queen Elizabeth II's entrance at the Paris Opera on 8 April 1957, which were assembled as a photo-montage by the magazine's technicians. It was one of the most challenging photo-montages ever created, because there were a sizeable live crowd, guards, and other dignitaries, in front of his camera. After leaving Picture Post Hardy became one of the most successful advertising photographers until his retirement in 1964 to his farm in Oxted.

His second wife, Sheila, was a photo researcher for Picture Post and still holds the copyright to his private collection of photos; Getty Images holds the copyright to his Picture Post works.

A memorial plaque honouring him is in the Church of Journalists, St. Bride's, Fleet Street, London.

Georges Brassens

Georges Brassens was a French singer-songwriter.

Georges Brassens was born in Sète (then called Cette), a town in southern France near Montpellier. Now an iconic figure in France, he achieved fame through his simple, elegant songs and articulate, diverse lyrics; indeed, he is considered one of France's most accomplished postwar poets. He has also set to music poems by both well-known and relatively obscure poets, including Louis Aragon, Victor Hugo, Jean Richepin, François Villon, and Guillaume Apollinaire.

During World War II, he was forced by the Germans to work in a labor camp at a BMW aircraft engine plant in Basdorf near Berlin in Germany (March 1943). Here Brassens met some of his future friends, such as Pierre Onténiente, whom he called Gibraltar because he was "steady as a rock." They would later become close friends.

After being given ten days' leave in France, he decided not to return to the labour camp. Brassens took refuge in a slum called "Impasse Florimont" where he lived for several years with its owner, Jeanne Planche, a friend of his aunt. Planche lived with her husband Marcel in relative poverty: without gas, running water, or electricity. Brassens remained hidden there until the end of the war five months later, but ended up staying for 22 years. Planche was the inspiration for Brassens's song Jeanne.

Brassens grew up in the family home in Sète with his mother, Elvira Dagrosa, father, Jean-Louis, half-sister, Simone (daughter of Elvira and her first husband, who was killed in the war), and paternal grandfather, Jules. His mother, who came from a Neapolitan family, was a devout Roman Catholic, while his father was an easy-going, generous, openminded, anticlerical man. Brassens grew up between these two starkly contrasting personalities, who nonetheless shared a love for music. His mother—whom Brassens labelled a "missionary for songs" (militante de la chanson), Simone and Jules, were always singing. This environment imparted to Brassens a passion for singing that would come to define his life. At the time he listened constantly to his early idols: Charles Trenet, Tino Rossi, and Ray Ventura. He was said to love music above all else: it was his first passion and the path that led him to his career. He told his friend André Sève, "[It is] a kind of internal vibration, something intense, a pleasure that has something of the sensual to it." He hoped to enroll at a music conservatory, but his mother insisted that he could only do so if his grades improved. Consequently, he never learned to read music. A poor student, Brassens performed badly in school.

Alphonse Bonnafé, Brassens' ninth-grade teacher, strongly encouraged his apparent gift for poetry and creativity. Brassens had already been experimenting with songwriting and poetry. Bonnafé aided his attempts at poetry and pushed him to spend more time on his schoolwork, suggesting he begin to study classical poetry. Brassens developed an interest in versification and rhyme. By Brassens' admission, Bonnafé's influence on his work is enormous: "We were thugs, at fourteen, fifteen, and we started to like poets. That is quite a transformation. Thanks to this teacher, I opened my mind to something bigger. Later on, every time I wrote a song, I asked myself the question: would Bonnafé like it?" By this point, music had taken a slight backstage to poetry for Brassens, who now dreamed of being a writer.

Nonetheless, personal friendships and adolescence still defined Brassens in his teens. At age seventeen, he was implicated in a crime that would prove to be a turning point in his life. In order to make a little money, Georges and his gang decided to turn to small thefts whose principal victims were their respective families. Georges stole a ring and a bracelet from his sister. The police found and caught him, which caused a minor scandal. The young men were publicly characterized as "high school mobsters" or "scum". Some of the perpetrators, unsupported by their families, spent time in prison. While Brassen's father was more forgiving and immediately picked up his son, Brassens was expelled from school. He decided to move to Paris in February 1940, following a short trial as an apprentice mason in his father's business after World War II had already broken out.

Brassens lived with his aunt Antoinette in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, where he taught himself to play piano. He began working at a Renault car factory. In May 1940 the factory was bombed, and France invaded by Germany. Brassens returned to the family home in Sète. He spent the summer in his home town, but soon returned to Paris, feeling that this was where his future lay. He did not work, since employment would serve only to profit the occupying enemy. Saddened by the lack of poetic culture, Brassens spent most of his days in the library. It was then that he set a pattern of arising at five in the morning, and going to bed at sunset - a pattern he maintained the greater part of his life. He meticulously studied the great masters: Villon, Baudelaire, Verlaine and Hugo. His approach to poetry was almost scientific. Reading, for instance, a poem by Verlaine, he dissected it image by image, attentive to the slightest change in rhythm, analysing the rhymes and the way they alternated. He drew on this enormous literary culture as wrote his first collection of poems, Des coups d’épée dans l’eau, whose conclusion foreshadowed the anarchism of his future songs:

His friends who heard and liked his songs urged him to go and try them out in a cabaret, café or concert hall. He was shy and had difficulty performing in front of people. At first, he wanted to sell his songs to most-known singers such as "les frères Jacques". The owner of a cafe told him that his songs were not the type he was looking for. But at one point he met the singer Patachou in a very well-known cafe, Les Trois Baudets, and she brought him into the music scene. Several famous singers came into the music industry this way, including Jacques Brel and Léo Ferré.

He rarely performed outside his own country, and his lyrics are difficult to translate, though attempts have been made. He performed with an acoustic guitar; most of the time, his only accompanying musician was his friend Pierre Nicolas with a double bass, and sometimes a second guitar (Barthélémy Rosso, Joël

Brassens died of cancer in 1981, in Saint-Gély-du-Fesc, having suffered health problems for many years, and rests at the Cimetière le Py in Sète.

Evan Hunter

Evan Hunter was a prolific American author and screenwriter. Though he was a successful and well-known writer using the Evan Hunter name (a name he legally adopted in 1952), he was perhaps even better known as Ed McBain, a name he used for most of his crime fiction, beginning in 1956.

Evan Hunter was born and raised as Salvatore Lombino in New York City, living in East Harlem until the age of 12, at which point his family moved to the Bronx. He attended Olinville Junior High School, then Evander Childs High School, before winning an Art Students League scholarship. Later, he was admitted as an art student at Cooper Union.

Lombino served in the Navy in World War II, writing several short stories while serving aboard a destroyer in the Pacific. However, none of these stories were published until after he had established himself as an author in the 1950s.

After the war, Lombino returned to New York and studied at Hunter College, majoring in English, with minors in dramatics and education. He published a weekly column in the Hunter College newspaper as "S.A. Lombino".

While looking to start a career as a writer, Lombino took a variety of jobs, including 17 days as a teacher at Bronx Vocational High School in September 1950. This experience would later form the basis for his 1954 novel The Blackboard Jungle.

In 1951, Lombino took a job as an Executive Editor for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, working with authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, P.G. Wodehouse, Lester del Rey, Poul Anderson, and Richard S. Prather, among others. He made his first professional short-story sale that same year, a science-fiction tale entitled "Welcome Martians", credited to S.A. Lombino.

Soon after his initial sale, Lombino sold stories under the pen names "Evan Hunter" and "Hunt Collins". The name "Evan Hunter" is generally believed to have been derived from two schools he attended, Evander Childs High School and Hunter College, although the author himself would never confirm that. (He did confirm that the name "Hunt Collins" was derived from Hunter College.)

Lombino legally changed his name to Evan Hunter in May 1952, after an editor told him that a novel he wrote would sell more copies if credited to "Evan Hunter" than it would if it were credited to "S.A. Lombino". Thereafter, he used the name Evan Hunter both personally and professionally.

As Evan Hunter, he gained fame with his 1954 novel The Blackboard Jungle, which dealt with juvenile crime and the New York City public school system. In 1956, the book was made into a movie.

During this ear, Hunter also wrote a great deal of genre fiction. He was advised by his agents that publishing too much fiction under the Hunter byline, or publishing any crime fiction as Evan Hunter, might weaken his literary reputation. As a consequence, during the 1950s Hunter used the pseudonyms Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, and Richard Marsten for much of his crime fiction. A prolific author in several genres, Hunter also published approximately two dozen science fiction stores and four SF novels bewtween 1951 and 1956 under the names S.A. Lombino, Evan Hunter, Richard Marsten, D.A. Addams and Ted Taine.

His most famous pseudonym, Ed McBain, debuted in 1956, with the first novel in the 87th Precinct crime series. NBC ran a police drama also called 87th Precinct during the 1961–1962 season based on McBain's work.

Hunter himself publicly revealed in 1958 that he was McBain, but he continued to use that pseudonym for several decades, most notably for the 87th Precinct series, and for the Matthew Hope series of detective novels.

By about 1960, Hunter had retired the pen names of Cannon, Marsten, Collins, Addams and Taine. From this point on, crime novels were generally attributed to McBain, and other sorts of fiction to Hunter. Reprints of crime-oriented stories and novels written in the 1950s previously attributed to other psuedonyms were issued under the McBain byline. Hunter stated that the division of names allowed readers to know what to expect: McBain novels had a consistent writing style, while Hunter novels were more varied.

Under the Hunter name, novels steadily appeared throuoght the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, including Come Winter (1973), and Lizzie (1984). Hunter was also active as a screenwriter, penning the screenplay of the 1963 film The Birds for Alfred Hitchcock, very loosely adapted from Daphne du Maurier's short story. He was also set to adapt Winston Graham's novel Marnie for Hitchcock, but he and the director had a disagreement over a crucial scene, and Hunter was let go.

From 1958 until his death, McBain's "87th Precinct" novels appeared at a rate of approximately one or two novels a year. From 1978 to 1998, they were joined by another McBain series about lawyer Matthew Hope; books in this series appeared every year or two. For about a decade, from 1984 to 1994, Hunter published no fiction under his own name.

In 2000, a novel called Candyland appeared that was credited to both Hunter and McBain. The two-part novel opened in Hunter's psychologically-based narrative voice before switching to McBain's customary police procedural style.

Aside from McBain, Hunter used at least two other pseudonyms after 1960. The 1975 novel Doors was originally attributed to Ezra Hannon, before being reissued as a work by McBain, and the 1992 novel Scimitar was credited to John Abbott.

Hunter died of laryngeal cancer in 2005 at the age of 78 in Weston, Connecticut.

Jimmy Swinnerton

James Guilford Swinnerton was an American cartoonist and artist. His nickname was Jimmy. He signed some of his early cartoons Swin, and one ephemeral comic strip Guilford.

He was born in Eureka, California, the son of Judge J. W. Swinnerton. He entered the San Francisco School of Design at age 14, and there studied under Emil Carlsen. In 1892 he became a staff cartoonist for Hearst's San Francisco Examiner. One of his first assignments was to produce a weekly cartoon for the children's section of the paper. The title of this series was successively California Bears, The Little Bears, and Little Bears and Tykes. Some critics have called the bears series the first comic strip, preceding The Yellow Kid by three years. This assertion is debatable, depending on the definition of comic strip, but Swinnerton was certainly drawing multi-panel stories with speech balloons by 1900.

In 1896 he moved to New York by invitation to produce comic strips for the Journal American, another Hearst paper. He drew a few more Little Bears for the paper, followed by some strips with a Noah's Ark setting, referred to as Mount Ararat. He hit upon a durable theme with a series of strips featuring anthropomorphic tigers, which soon took the title Mr. Jack. Mr. Jack, as the character developed, was an inveterate philanderer, to his wife's distress. Some of his misdeeds were considered unsuitable for juvenile readers. The strip had its last appearance in the Sunday color supplement in 1904. In a later revival (1912-1919) it appeared in the editorial pages. Meanwhile, Swinnerton continued to fill his Sunday space with a new character, a scatterbrained boy named Jimmy. He drew Jimmy in various formats, eventually under the title Little Jimmy, until 1958 (with a hiatus from 1941 to 1945). A peculiarity of Swinnerton's comic strips is that speeches appear in quotes within the speech balloons.

Around 1905, a doctor told Swinnerton that he was suffering from tuberculosis and had two weeks to live. Determined to defeat the prognosis, Swinnerton hopped on a train to Arizona, recovered, and stayed there. He alternated between residences in Arizona and California for most of his life.

The spectacular Arizona desertscape began to influence Swinnerton's artistic output. From 1922 to 1941, he produced a series of picture stories titled Canyon Kiddies for Good Housekeeping magazine (a Hearst publication). The Canyon Kiddies stories usually consisted of several lush color illustrations with captions in verse. In 1940, he painted fifty backgrounds for Warner Brothers for a Chuck Jones cartoon featuring the Canyon Kiddies, titled Mighty Hunters. He also painted desert scenes as a fine artist from about 1920 to 1965. His canvases are still in demand.

A natural arch in Monument Valley was named Swinnerton Arch in his honor.

Swinnerton died in Palm Springs at the age of 98.

Edward Seago

Edward Brian (Ted) Seago was an English artist who painted in both oils and watercolours.

The son of a coal merchant, born in Norwich, Seago was a self-taught artist, (although he did receive advice from Sir Alfred Munnings and Bernard Priestman), and enjoyed a wide range of admirers from the British Royal family and The Aga Khan to the common man. His works have been classified as either Impressionist or Post-Impressionist and included landscapes, seascapes, skyscapes, street scenes, his garden and portraits.

Aged fourteen, he won an award from the Royal Drawing Society, and from then on knew what he wanted to do in spite of his parents' initial disapproval. At the age of eighteen, Seago joined Bevin's Travelling Show and subsequently toured with circuses in Britain and throughout Europe.

Heart problems, identified at the age of seven dogged him all of his life, and he had to resort to subterfuge to join the army at the outbreak of the Second World War. He was commissioned as a Major in the Royal Engineers and advised on camouflage techniques for Field Marshall Auchinleck, (with whom he had a life-long friendship).

Such was his popularity that those who wished to buy one of his paintings had to queue at his various annual exhibitions around the world (with the single exception of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother).

"The Queen Mother bought so many that eventually the artist, who died in 1974, gave her two a year – on her birthday and at Christmas. Prince Philip invited him on a tour of the Antarctic in 1956, and his subsequent paintings, considered to be among his best, hang at Balmoral."

Seago also created the solid silver sculpture of St George slaying the Dragon, which serves as an automobile mascot for any state limousine in which Queen Elizabeth II is travelling. The mascot or "hood ornament", as it would be referred to in the United States, can be transferred from car to car. When the monarch is not aboard, it is substituted for the symbol of the manufacturer, such as the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy or the Bentley "B".

Seago died of a brain tumour in London on 19 January 1974.

Guy Debord

Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International (SI). He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.

Guy Debord was born in Paris. His father died early, and he was raised by his grandmother in a series of Mediterranean towns. He was a headstrong youth, and after graduating high school he dropped out of the University of Paris where he had been studying law. He became a revolutionary poet, writer and film-maker founding the Lettrist International schism with Gil J. Wolman. In the 1960s he led the Situationist International group, which influenced the Paris Uprising of 1968. His book Society of the Spectacle (1967) is considered a major catalyst for the uprising. In the 1970s Debord disbanded the Situationist International, and resumed filmmaking with financial backing from the movie mogul and publisher Gerard Lebovici. His two best films date from this period: a film version of Society of the Spectacle (1973) and the autobiographical "In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni" (1978). After the dissolution of the Situationist International, Debord spent his time reading, and occasionally writing, in relative isolation, although he continued to correspond on political and other issues, notably with Lebovici and the Italian situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti and designed a war game.

His lifelong steady alcohol consumption began to take a toll on his health. Apparently to end the suffering from a form of polyneuritis brought on by his excessive drinking, he committed suicide, shooting himself in the heart at his property (called Champot) in Bellevue-la-Montagne, Haute-Loire, on November 30, 1994.

Knut Hamsun

Knut Hamsun, born Knud Pedersen was a Norwegian author. He was considered by Isaac Bashevis Singer to be the "father of modern literature", and by King Haakon to be Norway's soul. In 1920, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his monumental work, Growth of the Soil". He insisted that the intricacies of the human mind ought to be the main object of modern literature, to describe the "whisper of the blood, and the pleading of the bone marrow". Hamsun pursued his literary program, debuting in 1890 with the psychological novel Hunger.

Knut Hamsun was born as Knud Pedersen in Vågå, Gudbrandsdal, Norway. He was the fourth son of Peder Pedersen and Tora Olsdatter (Garmostrædet). He grew up in poverty in Hamarøy in Nordland. At 17, he became an apprentice to a ropemaker, and at about the same time he started to write. He spent several years in America, traveling and working at various jobs, and published his impressions under the title Fra det moder