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INTRO

31 May, 2018

Pat Oliphant


Patrick Bruce "Pat" Oliphant is an Australian-American editorial cartoonist whose career spans more than fifty years. His trademark is a small penguin character named Punk, who is often seen making a comment about the subject of the panel. In 1990, the New York Times described him as "the most influential editorial cartoonist now working."

Oliphant's career began in 1952, when he worked as a copy boy with the Adelaide News. He worked as staff cartoonist for the Adelaide Advertiser until 1964, when he moved to the United States to take up a position with The Denver Post. His strip was nationally syndicated and internationally syndicated in 1965. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1967 for his 1 February 1966 cartoon They Won't Get Us to The Conference Table ... Will They? Oliphant moved to the now defunct Washington Star for six years, until the paper folded in 1981.

Oliphant's work has appeared in several exhibitions, most notably at the National Portrait Gallery. Beyond editorial cartoons, his work also includes painting, works on paper, and sculptures of political figures and animals. His work is in the permanent collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, Oliphant won the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award seven times in 1971, 1973, 1974, 1984, 1989, 1990, and 1991, the Reuben Award in 1968 and 1972 and the Thomas Nast Prize in 1992.

Oliphant retired from publishing syndicated cartoons after January 13, 2015, He came out of retirement on February 2, 2017 with two images of Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Jesse Owens


James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens was an American track and field athlete and four-time Olympic gold medalist in the 1936 Games.

Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history". His achievement of setting three world records and tying another in less than an hour at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been called "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport" and has never been equaled. At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, Owens achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and 4 × 100 meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black man, was credited with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy", although he "wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."

The Jesse Owens Award is USA Track and Field's highest accolade for the year's best track and field athlete. Owens was ranked by ESPN as the sixth greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century and the highest-ranked in his sport. In 1999 he was on the six-man shortlist for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century.

Owens was the youngest of ten children, three girls and seven boys, born to Henry Cleveland Owens (a sharecropper) and Mary Emma Fitzgerald in Oakville, Alabama, on September 12, 1913. J.C., as he was called, was nine years old when the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, for better opportunities, as part of the Great Migration, when 1.5 million African Americans left the segregated South. When his new teacher asked his name, he said "J.C.", but because of his strong Southern accent, she thought he said "Jesse". The name stuck, and he was known as Jesse Owens for the rest of his life.

As a youth, Owens took different jobs in his spare time: he delivered groceries, loaded freight cars and worked in a shoe repair shop while his father and older brother worked at a steel mill. During this period, Owens realized that he had a passion for running. Throughout his life, Owens attributed the success of his athletic career to the encouragement of Charles Riley, his junior high track coach at Fairmount Junior High School. Since Owens worked in a shoe repair shop after school, Riley allowed him to practice before school instead.

Owens and Minnie Ruth Solomon (1915–2001) met at Fairmont Junior High School in Cleveland when he was 15 and she was 13. They dated steadily through high school. Ruth gave birth to their first daughter, Gloria, in 1932. They married on July 5, 1935 and had two more daughters together: Marlene, born in 1937, and Beverly, born in 1940. They remained married until his death in 1980.

Darrel V. Heald


Darrel Verner Heald was a lawyer and political figure in Saskatchewan and a Canadian federal judge. He represented Lumsden from 1964 to 1971 in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan as a Liberal.

He was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, the son of Herbert Heald and Lotta Knutson, and was educated in Liberty, in Govan and at the University of Saskatchewan, where he received B.A. and a LLB degrees. Heald articled in Regina. He then served with the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. After the war, Heald practised law in Regina. In 1951, he married Doris Rose Hessey. He served in the provincial cabinet as Attorney General, as Provincial Secretary and as Minister of Co-operation and Co-operative Development. Heald was defeated by Gary Lane when he ran for reelection to the Saskatchewan assembly in 1971. He was a member of the executive for the Saskatchewan Roughriders and was president of the Regina Curling Club. In 1971, he was named to the Federal Court of Canada in Ottawa, serving in both the Trial and Appeal divisions. Heald retired from the bench in 1989. He retired to British Columbia and died there at the age of 90.

Godfrey Talbot


Godfrey Talbot was an English broadcast journalist. After an early career in print journalism, his time as a BBC Radio journalist included periods as a war reporter and royal correspondent. He was the first officially accredited court correspondent at Buckingham Palace.

Talbot was born on 8 October 1908 at Walton, near Wakefield, Yorkshire, and he was educated at Leeds Grammar School. He joined the Yorkshire Post at the age of 20. Four years later, he was editor of the Manchester City News, then worked at the Daily Dispatch, before joining the BBC in 1937.

During World War II, having been sent to replace Richard Dimbleby, he reported on North African battles such as Al Alamein and Cassino, for which he was mentioned in dispatches and, in 1946, made a military Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

He appeared as a castaway on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 29 August 1960. In the same year, he was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order. He published two volumes of autobiography.

He died peacefully at home on 3 September 2000.

Richard Dimbleby


Frederick Richard Dimbleby, CBE was an English journalist and broadcaster, who became the BBC’s first war correspondent, and then its leading TV news commentator.

As host of the long-running current affairs programme Panorama, he pioneered a popular style of interviewing that was respectful but searching. At formal public events, he could combine gravitas with creative insights based on extensive research. He was also able to maintain interest throughout the all-night election specials.

Dimbleby was born near Richmond, Surrey, the son of Gwendoline Mabel (Bolwell) and Frederick Jabez George Dimbleby, a journalist. He was educated at Mill Hill School, and began his career in 1931 on the Richmond and Twickenham Times, which his grandfather had acquired in 1894.

He then worked as a news reporter on the Southern Evening Echo in Southampton, before joining the BBC as a radio news reporter in 1936, going on to become their first war correspondent. He accompanied the British Expeditionary Force to France, and made broadcasts from the battle of El Alamein and the Normandy beaches during the D-Day landings.

During the war, he flew on some twenty raids as an observer with RAF Bomber Command, including one to Berlin, recording commentary for broadcast the following day. In 1945, he broadcast the first reports from Belsen concentration camp. He also was one of the first journalists to experiment with unconventional outside broadcasts, such as when flying in a de Havilland Mosquito accompanying a fighter aircraft raid on France, or being submerged in a diving suit, and also describing the wrecked interior of Hitler's Reich Chancellery at the war's end.

Married to Dilys Thomas in Copthorne, West Sussex in 1937, Dimbleby had four children, two of whom, David and Jonathan, have followed in his footsteps to become major broadcasting figures, both anchoring election night broadcasts (David on the BBC, Jonathan on ITN). In addition, Dimbleby's third son, Nicholas, sculpted the plaque in his father's name that was placed in Poets' Corner in 1990.

After the war Dimbleby switched to television, eventually becoming the BBC's leading news commentator, and is perhaps best remembered as the commentator on several major public occasions. These included the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and the funerals of George VI, John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill. He wrote a book about the coronation, Elizabeth Our Queen, which was given free to many schoolchildren at the time. He also wrote a London crime novel Storm at the Hook, published in 1948.

He was the BBC's war correspondent who accompanied the British 11th Armoured Division to the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and described the scene in a report so graphic that the BBC declined to broadcast it for four days, relenting only when he threatened to resign:

...Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.

He took part in the first Eurovision television relay in 1951 and appeared in the first live television broadcast from the Soviet Union in 1961. He also introduced a special programme in July 1962 showing the first live television signal from the United States via the Telstar satellite. In addition to heavyweight journalism, he took part in lighter sound radio programmes such as Twenty Questions (as a panel member) and Down Your Way.

From 1955 he was the host of the flagship current affairs series Panorama.  He was able to maintain his reporting talents by visiting places like Berlin, standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate a week before the Berlin Wall was erected across it by the communist authorities of East Germany.

Dimbleby's reputation was built upon his ability to describe events clearly yet with a sense of the drama and poetry of the many state occasions he covered. Examples included the Lying-in-State of George VI in Westminster Hall where he depicted the stillness of the guardsmen standing like statues at the four corners of the catafalque, or the description of the drums at Kennedy's funeral which, he said, "beat as the pulse of a man's heart." His commentary for the funeral of Churchill in January 1965 was the last state event he commentated upon.

To produce his commentaries, he carried out encyclopedic research on all aspects of the venues of great events, their history and that of the ceremonies taking place, and the personalities involved. This was a necessary part of radio commentary, which transferred well to television coverage. He could also improvise extensively if there were delays in the schedule. His audience always felt that they were in "safe hands", especially in Panorama programmed like the one dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Inevitably, because of his close association with establishment figures and royalty, some people criticized his "hushed tones" style of speaking at state occasions, claiming he was pompous. In an interview he laughed-off such attacks explaining that, even though he had to use a special microphone which covered his mouth to obviate his speaking disrupting the solemn atmosphere, he still had to pitch his voice low to avoid his voice carrying. A more common touch was demonstrated in his friendly broadcasts like Down Your Way where he met thousands of ordinary people in towns and villages, and the many trade unionists, politicians and industrialists etc. who appeared on Panorama and other programmed. Dimbleby also showed stamina and imperturbability in marathon election night broadcasts which ran from 10.00pm when the polls closed to around 6.00am or 7.00am the following morning.

During his time with Panorama, Dimbleby narrated the famous spaghetti-tree hoax on 1 April 1957, as an April Fool's Day joke. After commentating for half an hour on Elizabeth II's state visit in 1965 to Germany, Dimbleby uttered the minced oath, "Jesus wept," unaware that the microphone was live, after discovering that the TV pictures had failed for all 30 minutes, meaning he would have to repeat the commentary again.

In June 1946, Dimbleby was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services as a war correspondent. In the 1959 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

On December 22, 1965, Richard Dimbleby died in St Thomas' Hospital, London, at the age of 52.

William Leveson-Gower


Vice-Admiral William Spencer Leveson-Gower, 4th Earl Granville, KG, GCVO, CB, DSO, styled The Honourable William Leveson-Gower until 1939, was a British naval commander and governor from the Leveson-Gower family.

Leveson-Gower was the younger son of Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville, by his second wife Castila Rosalind Campbell. After Wixenford School, William Leveson-Gower joined the Royal Navy in 1894. He was promoted to Sub Lieutenant in 1900, and lieutenant on 26 June 1902, when he was re-appointed to the torpedo cruiser HMS Scout. In August 1902 he was posted to the HMS Hood, serving on the Mediterranean Station. Promotion to commander followed in 1913. He served in First World War and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1919.  He was appointed Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief, The Nore in 1924, aide-de-camp to the King in 1929 and Commander-in-Chief, Coast of Scotland in 1931. He was made a Companion of the Bath in 1930 and retired in 1935.

Leveson-Gower became Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man in 1937. In 1939 he succeeded his elder brother in the earldom. Granville was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1945 and became Governor of Northern Ireland in 1945, serving until 1952. He was made a Knight of the Garter that same year.

In 1916, Lord Granville married Lady Rose Bowes-Lyon, the second surviving daughter of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and elder sister of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Lord Granville died in June 1953, aged 72. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. The Countess Granville died in 1967.

W. Sholto Douglas


Marshal of the Royal Air Force William Sholto Douglas, 1st Baron Douglas of Kirtleside, was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force. After serving as a pilot, then a flight commander and finally as a squadron commander during the First World War, he served a flying instructor during the inter-war years before becoming Director of Staff Duties and then Assistant Chief of the Air Staff at the Air Ministry.

During the Second World War Douglas clashed with other senior commanders over strategy in the Battle of Britain. Douglas argued for a more aggressive engagement with a 'Big Wing' strategy i.e. using massed fighters to defend the United Kingdom against enemy bombers. He then became Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Fighter Command in which role he was responsible for rebuilding the command's strength after the attrition of the Battle of Britain, but also for bringing it on the offensive to wrest the initiative in the air from the German Luftwaffe.

Douglas went on to be Air Officer Commanding in Chief of RAF Middle East Command in which role he was an advocate of Operation Accolade, a planned British amphibious assault on Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean Sea, and was disappointed when it was abandoned. He became commander of the British Zone of Occupation in Germany after the war.

Born the son of Professor Robert Langton Douglas and his wife Margaret Jane Douglas (née Cannon), Douglas was educated at Emanuel School, Tonbridge School and Lincoln College, Oxford.

Douglas was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery on 15 August 1914. In January 1915, following a disagreement with his commanding officer, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps joining No. 2 Squadron as an observer. He soon trained as a pilot and earned Royal Aero Club Certificate No 1301. Promoted to lieutenant on 9 June 1915, he became a pilot with No. 14 Squadron at Shoreham in July 1915 and then transferred to No. 8 Squadron, flying B.E.2c aircraft on the Western Front, in August 1915. Appointed a flight commander with the rank of temporary captain in December 1915, he joined No. 18 Squadron at Montrose in January 1916. He was awarded the Military Cross on 14 January 1916.

Douglas went on to be officer commanding No. 43 Squadron, flying Sopwith 1½ Strutters on the Western Front, in April 1916 and, having been promoted to temporary major on 1 July 1916, he became then officer commanding No. 84 Squadron, flying S.E.5s on the Western Front, in August 1917. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on 8 February 1919.

After the war Douglas worked briefly for Handley Page and as a commercial pilot before rejoining the Royal Air Force in 1920 after a chance meeting with Hugh Trenchard. After being granted a permanent commission as a squadron leader on 25 March 1920, Douglas attended the RAF Staff College and then served as a flight instructor for four years. Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1925, he continued his work as an instructor before attending the Imperial Defence College in 1927. He became station commander at RAF North Weald in January 1928 and then joined the Air Staff at Headquarters Middle East Command in Khartoum in August 1929. Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1932, he became an instructor at the Imperial Defence College in June 1932 and then, having been promoted to air commodore on 1 January 1935, he became Director of Staff Duties at the Air Ministry on 1 January 1936. Promoted to air vice marshal on 1 January 1938, he went on to be Assistant Chief of the Air Staff on 17 February 1938.

On 22 April 1940, with the Second World War well under way, he was made Deputy Chief of the Air Staff. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 11 July 1940. During 1940, Douglas and Trafford Leigh-Mallory clashed with the head of No. 11 Group, Keith Park, and the head of Fighter Command, Hugh Dowding, over strategy in the Battle of Britain. Douglas argued for a more aggressive engagement with a 'Big Wing' strategy i.e. using massed fighters to defend the United Kingdom against enemy bombers. When Charles Portal was made Chief of the Air Staff in October 1940 he supported Douglas, moving Park and Dowding and appointing Douglas to replace Dowding as Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Fighter Command, with the temporary rank of air marshal on 25 November 1940. He was advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on 1 July 1941 and promoted to the substantive rank of air marshal on 14 April 1942.

At around this time Prime Minister Winston Churchill recommended Douglas to command the China Burma India Theater but General George Marshall refused to accept the appointment due to Douglas's well known dislike of Americans.

As commander-in-chief of Fighter Command, Douglas was responsible for rebuilding the command's strength after the attrition of the Battle of Britain, but also for bringing it on the offensive to wrest the initiative in the air from the German Luftwaffe. He was therefore one of the main orchestrators of the only partially successful Circus offensive whereby large wings of fighters accompanied by bombers would take advantage of good weather to sweep over Northern France.

Douglas was promoted to temporary air chief marshal on 1 July 1942. On 28 November 1942 Douglas was replaced at Fighter Command by Trafford Leigh-Mallory and was transferred to Egypt, becoming Air Officer Commanding in Chief of RAF Middle East Command in January 1943. In that capacity Douglas was an advocate of Operation Accolade, a planned British amphibious assault on Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean Sea, and was disappointed when it was abandoned.

Douglas returned to England in January 1944 to head Coastal Command during the invasion of Normandy and then, having been confirmed in the rank of air chief marshal on 6 June 1945, he became Commander in Chief, British Air Forces of Occupation in July 1945. He was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on 1 January 1946.

Promoted to marshal of the Royal Air Force on 1 January 1946, Douglas became the second commander of the British Zone of Occupation in Germany in May 1946. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Douglas of Kirtleside, of Dornock in the County of Dumfries on 17 February 1948, sitting as a member of the Labour Party. Douglas retired in 1947 and became chairman of BEA in 1949, a post he retained until 1964. He published two volumes of autobiography, Years of Combat, covering the First World War, and Years of Command covering the Second World War.

Douglas died in hospital in Northampton on October 29, 1969 and was buried at St Clement Danes in The Strand in London.

Sir Lennox Berkeley


Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley was an English composer.

He was born in Oxford, England, and educated at the Dragon School, Gresham's School and Merton College, Oxford. His father was Hastings George Fitzhardinge Berkeley, a captain in the Royal Navy and illegitimate son of George Lennox Rawdon Berkeley, 7th Earl of Berkeley (1827–1888).

In 1927, he went to Paris to study music with Nadia Boulanger, and there he became acquainted with Francis Poulenc, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger and Albert Roussel. Berkeley also studied with Maurice Ravel, often cited as a key influence in Berkeley's technical development as a composer.

In 1936 he met Benjamin Britten, another old boy of Gresham's School, at the ISCM Festival in Barcelona. Berkeley fell in love with Britten, who appears to have been wary of entering a relationship, writing in his diary, "we have come to an agreement on that subject." Nevertheless, the two composers shared a house for a year, living in the Old Mill at Snape, Suffolk, which Britten had acquired in July 1937. They subsequently enjoyed a long friendship and artistic association, collaborating on a number of works; these included the suite of Catalan dances titled Mont Juic, and Variations on an Elizabethan Theme.

He worked for the BBC during the Second World War, where he met his future wife, Freda Bernstein, whom he married in 1946. Lady Berkeley died in 2016.

He wrote several piano works for the pianist Colin Horsley, who commissioned the Horn Trio and some piano pieces, and gave the first performances and/or made the premier recordings of a number of his works, including his third Piano Concerto (1958).

He was Professor of Composition in the Royal Academy of Music from 1946 to 1968 and his pupils included Richard Rodney Bennett, David Bedford, Clive Strutt and John Tavener. 1954 saw the premiere of his first opera, Nelson, at Sadler's Wells. He was knighted in 1974 and from 1977–83 was President of the Cheltenham Festival.

He resided at 8 Warwick Avenue, London, from 1947 until his death in 1989

30 May, 2018

Sir Henry Gullett


Sir Henry Somer Gullett was an Australian politician who served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1925 until his death in the 1940 Canberra air disaster. He was a minister in the governments of Stanley Bruce, Joseph Lyons, Earle Page, and Robert Menzies, including as Minister for External Affairs under Menzies.

Gullett was born at Toolamba West, Victoria and educated at state schools, but left school at twelve on the death of his father. He began writing for newspapers. In 1908 he travelled to London as a journalist and in 1914 published a handbook on Australian rural life, The Opportunity in Australia to promote emigration to Australia.

In 1915, Gullett became an official Australian correspondent on the Western Front. In July 1916, he joined the first Australian Imperial Force (AIF) as a gunner. From early 1917 he worked with Charles Bean in collecting war records and later with the AIF as a war correspondent in Palestine. In 1919, he was briefly director of the Australian War Museum. He started writing volume VII of The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, covering the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, which he completed in 1922. In 1920, Billy Hughes appointed him head of the Australian Immigration Bureau, but he resigned in February 1922 over disagreements in relation to immigration policy and returned to journalism.

Gullett failed to win a seat at the 1922 election, but he won the seat of Division of Henty for the Nationalist Party in 1925 election and held it for the rest of his life. He was Minister for Trade and Customs from November 1928 in the third Bruce Ministry until its fall in October 1929. On the 1931 election of the United Australia Party government, he was again Minister for Trade and Customs and attended the British Empire Economic Conference in Ottawa, which attempted to establish Imperial Preference, a system of tariff concession within the British Empire. As a result, he was made Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in January 1933, but he resigned as minister on the same month on health grounds. In October 1934, he became minister without portfolio, with responsibility for trade treaties, in the second Lyons Ministry and he negotiated several trade agreements. He resigned in March 1937 over disagreements with Cabinet over trade policy.

In April 1939, Gullett became Minister for External Affairs in the first Menzies Ministry and Minister for Information from September 1939. However, when Robert Menzies formed a coalition with the Country Party in March 1940, he was moved to Vice-President of the Executive Council, and Minister in charge of Scientific and Industrial Research. He was killed in the Canberra air disaster in August 1940.

Robert Grow


Major General Robert Walker Grow was a senior United States Army officer who commanded the 6th Armored Division during World War II.

Born in Sibley, Iowa to Nellie (née Walker) and John Thomas Grow. His mother died when he was two years old and Grow went to live with his paternal grandparents, as his father went to Canada to work. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1916. He married Mary Louella Marshall (1896-1974), daughter of Willamina H. "Willie" (née Robertson) and J Walter Marshall, of Cleveland, Tennessee on November 5, 1917 in Hamilton, Tennessee. They had two sons, Robert Marshall and Walker Thomas, both attendees of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Robert W. Grow was the commander the U.S. 6th Armored Division on the Western Front, fighting during the battles of Normandy and of the Bulge.

His command of the 6th Armored Division in its rapid assault across the Brittany Peninsula is considered one of the finest examples of armor in the exploitation phase. This stunning advance is often overlooked due to the more glamorous exploits of the rest of the U.S. Army surrounding the German Seventh Army at the same time.

He is also known for being court-martialed in 1951 during the Cold War on charges of failing to safeguard classified information. At the time, he was the senior U.S. military attache in Moscow, and portions of his diary came into Soviet knowledge. Grow retired after the court-martial November 3, 1985

Thorbjörn Fälldin


Nils Olof Thorbjörn Fälldin was a Swedish politician. He was Prime Minister of Sweden in three non-consecutive cabinets from 1976 to 1982, and leader of the Swedish Centre Party from 1971 to 1985.

Fälldin was born in Högsjö parish, Ångermanland, the son of the farmer Nils Johan Fälldin and his wife Hulda (née Olsson). He grew up in a farming family in Ångermanland, and in 1956 he and his wife, as a newlywed young couple, took over a small farm. However, the farming authorities did not approve the purchase, as the farm was considered too small and too run down for production, and so refused to provide farm subsidies. This fight led him into the youth branch of the Swedish agrarian party Farmers' League (Bondeförbundet), which in 1958 changed its name to the Centre Party. He and his family maintained their farm throughout his political life, and when he resigned from politics in 1985, he immediately returned to it.

Fälldin entered the Swedish national political stage when he was elected to the Swedish Riksdag in 1958 for the agrarian-rooted Centre Party. In competition with Johannes Antonsson, he became first vice-chairman of the party in 1969, and then chairman in 1971, succeeding veteran Gunnar Hedlund.  In the 1976 election, the Social Democrats sensationally lost their majority for the first time in 40 years. Following the 1979 election, Fälldin regained the post of Prime Minister, despite his party suffering major losses and losing its leading role in the centre-right camp, primarily due to public disenchantment with the Centre Party over its compromise on nuclear power with the nuclear-friendly Moderates, and he again formed a coalition government with the Liberals and the Moderates. This cabinet also lasted for two years, when disagreement over tax policies compelled the Moderates to leave the coalition. Fälldin continued as Prime Minister until the election in 1982.

After a disastrous second election defeat in 1985 Fälldin faced massive criticism from his party. He resigned as party leader and retired from politics. His posts since that time have included chairman of Föreningsbanken, Foreningen Norden and Televerket.  While serving as Prime Minister during the U 137 crisis in October–November 1981, Fälldin is remembered for the simple answer "Hold the border!" (Håll gränsen!) to the request for instructions from the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces when faced with a suspected Soviet raid to free the stranded submarine.

He died at the age of 90, on July 23, 2016.

28 May, 2018

Einar Lundborg


Einar Lundborg  was a Swedish aviator.

He was born on April 5, 1896. In 1928 he rescued Umberto Nobile after Nobile's airship crash on the ice north of Spitsbergen. He was later promoted to captain in the Swedish Air Force.

Before joining the airforce, Lundborg participated in the Finnish Civil War in 1918 and in the Estonian War of Independence in 1919–1920.

Lundborg was killed during a test flight of the Jaktfalken airplane at Malmslätt in 1931. He was survived by his wife Margareta, née Malmberg (1900–1981). He is buried in Linköping, Sweden.

Sir Roy Dowling


Vice Admiral Sir Roy Russell Dowling was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). He served as Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), the RAN's highest-ranking position, from 1955 until 1959, and as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC), forerunner of the role of Australia's Chief of the Defence Force, from 1959 until 1961.

Born in northern New South Wales, Dowling entered the Royal Australian Naval College in 1915. After graduating in 1919 he went to sea aboard various Royal Navy and RAN vessels, and later specialised in gunnery. In 1937, he was given command of the sloop HMAS Swan. Following the outbreak of World War II, he saw action in the Mediterranean theatre as executive officer of the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Naiad, and survived her sinking by a German U-boat in March 1942. Returning to Australia, he served as Director of Plans and later Deputy Chief of Naval Staff before taking command of the light cruiser HMAS Hobart in November 1944. His achievements in the South West Pacific earned him the Distinguished Service Order.

Dowling took command of the RAN's first aircraft carrier, HMAS Sydney, in 1948. He became Chief of Naval Personnel in 1950, and Flag Officer Commanding HM Australian Fleet in 1953. Soon after taking up the position of CNS in February 1955, he was promoted to vice admiral and appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath. As CNS he had to deal with shortages of money, manpower and equipment, and with the increasing role of the United States in Australia's defence planning, at the expense of traditional ties with Britain. Knighted in 1957, Dowling was Chairman of COSC from March 1959 until May 1961, when he retired from the military. In 1963 he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and became Australian Secretary to Queen Elizabeth II, serving until his death in 1969.

Hector Laws


Hector Macdonald Laws was a senior officer in the Royal Australian Navy. His career spanned almost thirty years, including service in both world wars. At the helm of HMAS Stuart in the Mediterranean from 1939 to 1941, he won recognition as a skillful ship's captain and flotilla commander. He then transferred to the South West Pacific as captain of the light cruiser HMAS Perth, and went down with his ship against heavy odds during the Battle of Sunda Strait in early 1942.

Lauris Norstad


Lauris Norstad was an American General in the United States Army Air Forces and United States Air Force.

Lauris Norstad was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to a Norwegian immigrant Lutheran minister and his wife. He earned his high school diploma from St. Thomas Military Academy in St Paul, Minn. He graduated from the United States Military Academy June 12, 1930 and was commissioned a second lieutenant of cavalry. In September 1930, he entered Primary Flying School at March Field, California, and graduated from Advanced Flying School and was transferred to the Air Corps in June 1931. Going to Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, in January 1932, he was assigned to the 18th Pursuit Group, assuming command of it in July 1933. In March 1936 he was named adjutant of the Ninth Bomb Group there. Entering the "short course" the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, Alabama, in September 1939, he graduated three months later and returned to Mitchel Field as officer in charge of the 9th Bomb Group Navigation School.

Moving to Langley Field, Virginia, in July 1940, General Norstad was adjutant of the 25th Bomb Group, and the following November he was named assistant chief of staff for intelligence of General Headquarters Air Force there. In February 1942 he was appointed a member of the Advisory Council to the commanding general of the Army Air Forces at Washington, DC.

In August 1942, Norstad was named assistant chief of staff for operations (A-3) of the Twelfth Air Force, going to England with it the following month in support of Operation Husky, and to Algiers, North Africa in October 1942. Here he met General Dwight Eisenhower, who said of him: "It was on that occasion that I first met Lieutenant-Colonel Lauris Norstad, a young air officer who so impressed me by his alertness, grasp of problems, and personality that I never thereafter lost sight of him. He was and is one of those rare men whose capacity knows no limit."

In February 1943, he was promoted to brigadier general and assumed the additional duty of assistant chief of staff for operations of the Northwest African Air Forces. In December 1943 he was appointed director of operations of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces at Algiers, moving with it to Caserta, Italy, two months later.

Norstad was transferred to Washington, D.C. in August 1944, where he was deputy chief of Air Staff at Army Air Force Headquarters with added duty as chief of staff of the 20th Air Force. He was relieved of this additional duty May 8, 1945, and assumed additional duty as assistant chief of Air Staff for Plans at Army Air Force Headquarters. He was promoted to major general the following month. Relieved of assignment as chief of staff of the 20th Air Force in February 1946, he continued as assistant chief of air staff for plans until the following June, when he was appointed director of the Plans and Operations Division of the War Department at Washington, DC. On October 1, 1947, following the division of the War Department into the Departments of The Army and The Air Force, General Norstad was appointed deputy chief of staff for operations of the Air Force, and the following May assumed additional duty as acting vice chief of staff of the Air Force.

Joining the U.S. Air Forces in Europe in October 1950 General Norstad was commander in chief, USAFE, with headquarters at Wiesbaden, Germany. On April 2, 1951 he assumed additional duty as commanding general of the Allied Air Forces in Central Europe under the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe. He was designated air deputy to the supreme allied commander, Europe, SHAPE, on July 27, 1953.

Relieved of duty as air deputy to the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) on November 20, 1956, Norstad was appointed by the president as the new Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and Commander in Chief, U.S. European Command. He served in that post until January 1963 when General Lyman Lemnitzer replaced him. Norstad initially encouraged France to develop its own nuclear capacity, but then defected on the idea once he grew disillusioned with French President Charles de Gaulle's interference with NATO.

General Norstad retired from the USAF on December 31, 1963. After his military retirement, he became the Chief Executive Officer and President of Owens Corning from 1963 until 1972 and served on the Board of Directors of Rand Corporation. He died on September 12, 1988.


John Bulkeley


John Duncan Bulkeley was a vice admiral in United States Navy and was one of its most decorated naval officers. Bulkeley received the Medal of Honor for actions in the Pacific Theater during World War II. He was also the PT boat skipper who evacuated General Douglas MacArthur from Corregidor in the Philippines and commanded at the Battle of La Ciotat.

Bulkeley was born in New York City and grew up on a farm in Hackettstown, New Jersey, where he graduated from Hackettstown High School.  He was a 1933 graduate of the United States Naval Academy.

At the dawn of World War II, Bulkeley was a lieutenant in command of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three, a Philippine-based detachment of six motor torpedo boats. He hit his stride as a daring, resourceful and courageous leader. He picked up General Douglas MacArthur, his family, and his immediate staff, who had been ordered to flee the Philippines, and took them aboard PT 41 and other 77-foot (23 m) motor torpedo boats through over 600 nautical miles (1,000 km) of open ocean. On arriving at Mindanao, MacArthur said, "You have taken me out of the jaws of death. I shall never forget it." Bulkeley earned many of his array of decorations while in command of that squadron and a subsequent one. He was evacuated to Australia by B-17 in the final days of the campaign.

In September 1942, while in the States helping to raise War Bonds as a lieutenant commander, he met former Ambassador to Britain Joseph Kennedy at New York's Plaza Hotel, and shortly after was instrumental in recruiting Lieutenant John F. Kennedy into the Navy's Motor Torpedo Boat Training Center (MTBTC) at Mellville, Rhode Island. Kennedy's heroic captaining of the PT 109 would help to launch his first campaign for Congress.

In 1944, he took part in the Normandy invasion. Bulkeley led torpedo boats and minesweepers in clearing the lanes to Utah Beach, keeping German E-boats from attacking the landing ships along the Mason Line, and picking up wounded sailors from the sinking minesweeper USS Tide (AM-125), destroyer escort USS Rich (DE-695), and destroyer USS Corry (DD-463). As invasion operations wound down, he received command of his first large ship, the destroyer USS Endicott (DD-495). One month after D-Day, he came to the aid of two British gunboats under attack by two German corvettes. Bulkeley's vessel largest gun was smaller than the guns on the German ship. After days of fighting, Bulkeley only had one working gun on his ship. Charging in with only one gun working, he engaged both enemy vessels at point-blank range, sinking both. Afterwards, Bulkeley rescued the British sailors in the water and then rescued many of the German sailors as well. When asked, he explained, "What else could I do? You engage, you fight, you win. That is the reputation of our Navy, then and in the future."

During the Korean War in 1952, Bulkeley commanded Destroyer Division 132. After the war, he was Chief of Staff for Cruiser Division Five.

In the early 1960s, Bulkeley commanded Clarksville Base, Tennessee, then a tri-service command under the aegis of the Defense Atomic Support Agency. Having lost none of his wartime daring, Bulkeley was known to test the alertness of the Marines guarding the base by donning a ninja suit, blackening his face and endeavoring to penetrate the classified area after dark without detection. This was a dangerous endeavor, as the Marines carried loaded weapons. Ever popular with his men, who both respected and admired him, Bulkeley could be seen driving around the base in his fire-engine red Triumph TR3 sports car with a large silver PT boat as a hood ornament.

Promoted to Rear Admiral by President John F. Kennedy, who commanded PT-109 during World War II, Bulkeley was dispatched to command the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, where he met Cuba's threat to sever water supplies in response to the Bay of Pigs invasion and other assaults by ordering the installation of desalinization equipment to make the base self-sufficient.

Bulkeley retired from active duty in 1975. However, he was recalled to active duty in a retired-retained status to serve as the commander of the Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) which conducts inspections and surveys of U.S. naval vessels before their commissioning and deployment. Bulkeley retired from the Navy in 1988, after 55 years of service.

On 6 April 1996, Bulkeley died at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, at age 84.

Gustav Jahoda


Gustav Jahoda was an Austrian psychologist and writer.

He was educated in Vienna, then subsequently in Paris and London. He studied sociology and psychology at London University before obtaining a lectureship in social psychology at the University of Manchester. In 1952 he took up a post at the University College of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in the Department of Sociology, where he carried out pioneering research into cross-cultural psychology.

In 1963, Gustav Jahoda was invited to set up a new psychology department in the University of Strathclyde, although he continued to make field trips to West Africa. He retired in 1985.

He published works on cross-cultural psychology, socio-cognitive development and history of the social sciences. He also published more than 200 articles. Jahoda was elected fellow of the British Academy in 1988 and fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1993.  He died on December 12, 2016 at the age of 96.

15 May, 2018

Peter Tosh


Peter Tosh was a Jamaican reggae musician. Along with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer, he was one of the core members of the band the Wailers (1963–1976), after which he established himself as a successful solo artist and a promoter of Rastafari. 


Christopher Stone


Major Christopher Reynolds Stone was the first disc jockey in the United Kingdom.

He was the youngest son of Eton College's assistant master and Stonehouse preparatory school's founder Edward Daniel Stone. Christopher Stone was educated at Eton College and served in the Royal Fusiliers. In 1906 Stone published a book of Sea songs and ballads and in 1923 he wrote the history of his old regiment. He became the London editor of The Gramophone, a magazine started by his brother-in-law Compton Mackenzie.

Stone approached the BBC himself with the idea for a record program, which the corporation initially dismissed. Stone managed to convince them though and on 7 July 1927 he started playing records on air. His relaxed, conversational style was exceptional at a time when most of the BBC's presentation was extremely formal, and his programs became highly popular as a result. He wore a dinner jacket and tie when he presented.

In 1934 Stone joined the commercial station Radio Luxembourg (for 5,000 pounds a year) and was barred by the BBC in consequence. He wrote a column reviewing new popular records for the Sunday Referee newspaper and appeared in advertisements for Bush radio sets. In 1937, as "Uncle Chris", he presented the first daily children's program on commercial radio, Kiddies Quarter Hour on Radio Lyons. Stone later rejoined the BBC and caused a major row in 1941. On 11 November he wished King Victor Emmanuel of Italy a happy birthday on air, adding "I don't think any of us wish him anything but good, poor soul." This good wish towards the head of a state Britain was at war with at the time led to the sacking of the BBC's Senior Controller of Program and tighter government control over all broadcasts.

Stone was an avid record collector; in the mid-1930s he already owned over 12,000. When he turned 75 in 1957 the magazine Melody Maker praised his pioneering work: "Everyone who has written, produced or compered a gramophone program should salute the founder of his trade."

Sir Alan McNicoll


Vice Admiral Sir Alan Wedel Ramsay McNicoll was a senior officer in the Royal Australian Navy and a diplomat.

McNicoll was born in Melbourne, he entered the Royal Australian Naval College at the age of thirteen and graduated in 1926. Following training and staff appointments in Australia and the United Kingdom, he was attached to the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the Second World War. As torpedo officer of the 1st Submarine Flotilla in the Mediterranean theatre, McNicoll was decorated with the George Medal in 1941 for disarming enemy ordnance. He served aboard HMS King George V from 1942, sailing in support of several Arctic convoys and taking part in the Allied invasion of Sicily. McNicoll was posted for staff duties with the Admiralty from September 1943 and was involved in the planning of the Normandy landings. He returned to Australia in October 1944.

McNicoll was made executive officer of HMAS Hobart in September 1945. Advanced to captain in 1949, he successively commanded HMAS Shoalhaven and HMAS Warramunga before being transferred to the Navy Office in July 1950. In 1952, McNicoll chaired the planning committee for the British nuclear tests on the Montebello Islands, and was appointed commanding officer of HMAS Australia. He commanded the ship for two years before it was sold off for scrap, at which point he returned to London to attend the Imperial Defence College in 1955. He occupied staff positions in London and Canberra before being posted to the Naval Board as Chief of Personnel in 1960. This was followed by a term as Flag Officer Commanding HM Australian Fleet.

McNicoll's career culminated with his promotion to vice admiral and appointment as First Naval Member and Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) in February 1965. As CNS, McNicoll had to cope with significant morale and recruitment issues occasioned by the February 1964 collision between HMAS Melbourne and Voyager and, furthermore, oversaw an extensive modernization of the Australian fleet. In 1966, he presided over the RAN contribution to the Vietnam War, and it was during his tenure that the Australian White Ensign was created. McNicoll retired from the RAN in 1968 and was appointed as the inaugural Australian Ambassador to Turkey. He served in the diplomatic post for five years, then retired to Canberra. McNicoll died in 1987 at the age of 79.

Sir Peter Phipps



Sir Peter Phipps served as Chief of Naval Staff and the first Chief of the New Zealand Defense Force.

Phipps began his military career in 1928 when he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as an ordinary seaman. He was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in 1930 and as a lieutenant in 1934. In 1940, after the outbreak of war, he traveled to the United Kingdom where he was given his first command. This was the minesweeper HMS Bay which operated in the English Channel. Fifty aircraft attacked the convoy that Bay was helping escort and she was bombed. Phipps was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for bringing his damaged ship home.

Promoted to Lieutenant Commander, he took command of HMNZS Scarba, one of four Isles class minesweeping trawlers purchased for New Zealand. They carried out convoy duties in route to Auckland where they arrived August 4, 1942. Phipps then became commanding officer of Moa, which, with her sister ship Kiwi, sank the Japanese submarine I-1 which was supporting Operation Ke during the Guadalcanal Campaign in the Solomon Islands. Both ships were patrolling at Guadalcanal and Kiwi's depth-charge attack brought the submarine to the surface. She attempted to escape but was rammed by Kiwi while Moa continued to illuminate with star shell. Moa pursued and pressed home the attack upon the submarine, which eventually ran aground on a reef. Phipps was awarded a Bar to his DSC and the United States Navy Cross for this action.

In April 1943, Phipps was wounded when Japanese aircraft sank Moa at Tulagi Harbour. The ship sustained a direct hit from a 500-pound bomb and sank within four minutes. Five ratings were killed and seven were seriously wounded. Phipps then became the Senior Officer of the 25th Minesweeping Flotilla in the Solomon’s. He represented the New Zealand Government at the surrender of the Japanese forces in Nauru and Ocean Island. After the war, he commanded the training base HMNZS Philomel, where in April 1947 he had to deal with a mutiny of sailors from the base and several ships, over low pay and poor working conditions. He then became the executive officer of the cruiser Bellona. Between 1953 and 1955, he went overseas and served in a senior position in the Admiralty. He then took command successively of the cruisers Bellona and Royalist. When Phipps went to take command of Royalist in 1955, diplomat Frank Corner found that Phipps agreed that the Royalist was completely unsuitable for New Zealand's requirements, and Phipps regarded her purchase as an unmitigated disaster.

Phipps’ later career was a series of firsts for a New Zealander – he was the first NZ naval officer appointed to the New Zealand Naval Board (1957), the first to reach flag rank, the first to be appointed to Chief of Naval Staff (1960) and the first Chief of Defense Staff (1963), following the establishment of the Ministry of Defense. Phipps was knighted for his services in the 1964 Birthday Honors. On his retirement in 1965, he was created vice-admiral. He died in a car crash on September 18, 1989.

08 May, 2018

Dr. Robert W. Woods


Robert Williams Wood was an American physicist and inventor.

Born in Concord, Massachusetts, Wood attended The Roxbury Latin School with the initial intent of becoming a priest. However, he decided to study optics instead when he witnessed a rare glowing aurora one night and believed the effect to be caused by "invisible rays". In his pursuit to find these "invisible rays", Wood studied and earned several degrees in physics from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago. From 1894 to 1896, he worked with Heinrich Rubens at the Berlin University.

Dr. Wood returned to the U.S.A., where he taught briefly at the University of Wisconsin and eventually became a full-time professor of "optical physics" at Johns Hopkins University from 1901 until his death. He worked closely with Alfred Lee Loomis at Tuxedo Park, New York. He wrote many articles on spectroscopy, phosphorescence and diffraction. He is best known for his work in ultraviolet light.

Another of his claims to fame was his debunking of N-rays in 1904. The French physicist Prosper-René Blondlot claimed to have discovered a new form of radiation like X-rays, which he named N-rays. Some physicists reported having successfully reproduced his experiments; others reported that they had failed. Visiting Blondlot's laboratory at the behest of the journal Nature, Wood surreptitiously removed an essential prism from Blondlot's apparatus during a demonstration. The effect did not vanish, showing that N-rays had always been self-deception on Blondlot's part.

Wood identified an area of very low ultraviolet albedo (reflectivity, that is most of the ultraviolet is absorbed) in the Aristarchus Plateau region of the Moon, one that he suggested was due to high sulfur content. The area continues to be called Wood's Spot. In 1909, Wood constructed the first practical liquid mirror astronomical telescope, by spinning mercury to form a paraboloidal shape, and investigated its benefits and limitations. Wood has been described as the "father of both infrared and ultraviolet photography." Though the discovery of electromagnetic radiation beyond the visible spectrum and the development of photographic emulsions capable of recording them predate Dr. Wood, he was the first to intentionally produce photographs with both infrared and ultraviolet radiation. In 1903 he developed a filter, Wood's glass, that was opaque to visible light but transparent to both ultraviolet and infrared, and is used in modern-day black lights. He used it for ultraviolet photography but also suggested its use for secret communication. He was also the first person to photograph ultraviolet fluorescence. He also developed an ultraviolet lamp, which is widely known as the Wood's lamp in medicine. The slightly surreal glowing appearance of foliage in infrared photographs is called the Wood effect.

Dr. Wood also authored nontechnical works. In 1915, Wood co-wrote a science fiction novel, The Man Who Rocked the Earth, along with Arthur Train. Its sequel, The Moon Maker, was published the next year. Wood also wrote and illustrated two books of children's verse, How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers (1907), and Animal Analogues (1908).

Wood also took part in the investigation of several crimes including the Wall Street bombing. Dr. Wood married Gertrude Hooper Ames in 1892 in San Francisco. She was the daughter of Pelham Warren and Augusta Hooper (Wood) Ames, and the granddaughter of William Northey Hooper and the Massachusetts Supreme Court justice Seth Ames. Dr. Wood died in Amityville, New York.

Frederic John Walker


Captain Frederic John Walker was a Royal Navy officer noted for his exploits during World War II.

Walker was born in Plymouth, the son of Frederic Murray and Lucy Selina (née Scriven) Walker. He joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1909 and was educated at the Royal Naval Colleges at Osborne and Dartmouth, where he excelled. First serving on the battleship Ajax as a midshipman, Walker as a sub-lieutenant went on to join the destroyers Mermaid and Sarpedon in 1916 and 1917 respectively. Following the end of the First World War, Walker joined the Queen Elizabeth-class battleship Valiant.

During the interwar period Walker partook in the field of antisubmarine warfare. He took a course at the newly founded antisubmarine warfare training school of HMS Osprey, on the Isle of Portland, which was established in 1924. Walker consequently became an expert in this type of warfare, and was appointed to a post specializing in this field, serving on many capital ships. In May 1933 he was promoted to commander and took charge of the World War I destroyer Shikari. In December 1933 Walker, took command of the Shoreham-class sloop Falmouth based on the China Station. In April 1937 Walker became the Experimental Commander at HMS Osprey.

When World War II began, in 1939, Walker's career seemed at an end. Still a commander, he had been ignored for promotion to captain and indeed had been scheduled for early retirement. He gained a reprieve, however, due to the commencement of war and in 1940 was appointed as Operations Staff Officer to Vice-Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay. Even so, Walker still had not been given a command, despite expertise in antisubmarine warfare that would no doubt be indispensable in the Battle of the Atlantic. During Walker's time in that role the Operation Dynamo evacuation took place from Dunkirk, in which the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated from France. The evacuation was a success with over 330,000 British and French troops being rescued and brought back to England, or to Brittany. He was Mentioned in Despatches for his work during this operation.

Walker received his own command in October 1941, taking control of the 36th Escort Group, commanding from the Bittern-class sloop Stork. The escort group comprised two sloops (including the Stork) and six corvettes and was based in Liverpool, the home of the Western Approaches Command. Initially his Group was primarily used to escort convoys to and from Gibraltar.

Walker's first chance to test his innovative methods against the U-boat menace came in December when his group escorted Convoy HG 76 (32 ships). During the journey five U-boats were sunk, four by Walker's group, including the U-574 which was depth-charged and rammed by Walker's own ship on 19 December. The Royal Navy's loss during the Battle for HG76 was one escort carrier, the Audacity, formerly the German vessel Hannover; one destroyer, the Stanley, and two merchant ships. This is sometimes described as the first true Allied convoy victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. He was given the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) on 6 January 1942, "For daring, skill and determination while escorting to this country a valuable Convoy in the face of relentless attacks from the Enemy, during which three of their Submarines were sunk and two aircraft destroyed by our forces". Walker's group succeeded in sinking at least three more U-boats during his tenure as commander of the 36th Group. He was awarded the first Bar to his DSO in July 1942.


During 1942, Walker left the 36th Group and became Captain (D) Liverpool, granting him some time to recuperate. He finally returned to a ship command when he became commander of the 2nd Support Group in 1943, consisting of six sloops. Walker led from Starling, a newly commissioned Black Swan-class sloop. The group was intended to act as reinforcement to convoys under attack, with the capacity to actively hunt and destroy U-boats, rather than be restricted to escorting convoys. Walker had suggested the innovative idea to the Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches Command, Sir Max Horton. The combination of an active hunting group and a charismatic, determined, and innovative antisubmarine specialist such as Walker proved to be a potent force. One eccentric aspect of his charismatic nature was the playing of the tune A Hunting We Will Go over the ship's Tannoy when returning to its base.

In June 1943 Walker's own ship Starling was responsible for the sinking of two U-boats. The first, U-202, was destroyed on 2 June by depth charges and gunfire, and the other, U-119, on 24 June by depth charges and ramming. Another U-boat, the U-449, was sunk by his group on the same day. One highly successful tactic employed by Walker was the creeping attack, in which two ships would work together to keep contact with a U–boat while attacking. A refinement of this was the barrage attack, in which three or more sloops in line to launch depth charges to saturate the area with depth charges in a manner similar to a rolling barrage by artillery in advance of an infantry attack. On 30 July, Walker's group encountered a group of three U-boats on the surface (two were vital type XIV replenishment boats known as "Milk Cows") while in the Bay of Biscay. He signaled the "General Chase" to his group and fired at them, causing damage that prevented them from diving. Two of the submarines, U-462, a Type XIV, and U-504, a Type IX/C40, were then sunk by Walker's group, and the second Type XIV, U-461, by an Australian Short Sunderland flying boat.


Upon his return to Liverpool, Walker was informed that his son, Timothy Walker, had been killed when the submarine HMS Parthian was lost in early August 1943 in the Mediterranean Sea. On 14 September 1943, Walker was appointed as a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) "for leadership and daring in command of H.M.S. Starling in successful actions against Enemy submarines in the Atlantic."

On 6 November 1943 Walker's group sank U-226 and U-842. In early 1944 Walker's group displayed its efficiency against U-boats by sinking six in one patrol. On 31 January 1944 Walker's group gained its first kill of the year when it sank the U-592. On 9 February his group sank U-762, U-238, and U-734 in one action, then sank U-424 on 11 February, and U-264 on 19 February. On 20 February 1944, one ship of Walker's group, the HMS Woodpecker, was torpedoed and sank seven days later while being towed home. All her crewmen were saved. They returned to their base at Liverpool to the thrilled jubilation of the city's inhabitants and the Admiralty. The First Lord of the Admiralty was present to greet Walker and his ships. Walker was promoted to captain and awarded a second bar to his DSO.

In March 1944, Walker's group provided the escort for the U.S. Navy light cruiser USS Milwaukee which was on its way to Russia as part of the Lend-Lease program. Walker's group sank two U-boats on the outward trip, and a third on the return trip. Walker's last duty was protecting the fleet from U-boats during the Normandy Landings, the immense Allied invasion of France. This he did successfully for two weeks; no U-boats managed to get past Walker and his vessels, and many U-boats were sunk or damaged in the process. During this concerted effort Walker's dedication to his tasks was tremendous; he took no respite from his duties, which ultimately contributed to his death. He was awarded the third bar on his DSO on 13 June 1944, and was again Mentioned in Dispatches on 20 June 1944.

Walker suffered a cerebral thrombosis on 7 July 1944, and he died two days later at the Naval Hospital at Seaforth, Merseyside, at the age of 48.

Ivan Mosjoukine


Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin, regularly billed as Ivan Mosjoukine, was a Russian silent film actor.

Ivan Mozzhukhin was born in Kondol, in the Saratov Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Penza Oblast in Russia), the youngest of four brothers. His mother Rachel Ivanovna Mozzhukhina (née Lastochkina) was the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest, while his father Ilya Ivanovich Mozzhukhin came from peasants and served as an estate manager for the noble Obolensky family. He inherited this position from his own father — a serf whose children were granted freedom as a gratitude for his service.

While all three elder brothers finished seminary, Ivan was sent to the Penza gymnasium for boys and later studied law at the Moscow State University. In 1910, he left academic life to join a troupe of traveling actors from Kiev, with which he toured for a year, gaining experience and a reputation for dynamic stage presence. Upon returning to Moscow, he launched his screen career with the 1911 adaptation of Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. He also starred in A House in Kolomna (1913, after Pushkin), Pyotr Chardynin directed drama Do You Remember? opposite the popular Russian ballerina Vera Karalli (1914), Nikolay Stavrogin (1915, after Dostoyevsky's The Devils aka The Possessed), The Queen of Spades (1916, after Pushkin) and other adaptations of Russian classics.

Mosjoukine's most lasting contribution to the theoretical concept of film as image is the legacy of his own face in recurring representation of illusory reactions seen in Lev Kuleshov's psychological montage experiment which demonstrated the Kuleshov Effect. In 1918, the first full year of the Russian Revolution, Kuleshov assembled his revolutionary illustration of the application of the principles of film editing out of footage from one of Mosjoukine's Tsarist-era films which had been left behind when he, along with his entire film production company, departed for the relative safety of Crimea in 1917.

At the end of 1919, Mosjoukine arrived in Paris and quickly established himself as one of the top stars of the French silent cinema, starring in one successful film after another. Handsome, tall, and possessing a powerful screen presence, he won a considerable following as a mysterious and exotic romantic figure.

The first film of his French career was also his final Russian film. L'Angoissante Aventure (The Harrowing Adventure) was a dramatized record of the difficult and dangerous journey of Russian actors, directors and other film artists as they made their way from Crimea into the chaos of Ottoman Turkey in the midst of the post-World War I fall of the Sultanate. The group was headed by the renowned director Yakov Protazanov and included Mosjoukine's frequent leading lady Natalya Lisenko (billed in France as Nathalie Lissenko), whom he married and later divorced. Their ultimate destination was Paris, which became the new capital for most of the exiled former aristocrats and other refugees escaping the civil war and Bolshevik terror gripping Russia. The film was completed and released in Paris in November 1920.


Mosjoukine's film stardom was assured and during the 1920s, his face with the trademark hypnotic stare appeared on covers of film magazines all over Europe. He wrote the screenplays for most of his starring vehicles and directed two of them, L'Enfant du carnaval (Child of the Carnival), released on 29 August 1921 and Le Brasier ardent (The Blazing Inferno), released on 2 November 1923. The leading lady in both films was the then-"Madame Mosjoukine", Nathalie Lissenko. Brasier, in particular, was highly praised for its innovative and inventive concepts, but ultimately proved too surreal and bizarre to become financially successful. Styled like a semi-comic Kafkaesque nightmare, the film has him playing a detective known only as "Z" hired by an older husband to follow his adventurous young wife. However, the plot was only the device which Mosjoukine and his assistant director Alexandre Volkoff used to experiment with the audience's perception of reality. Many of the scenes seem to be taking place on sets that are disconcertingly larger than normal and one particularly striking staging has the husband entering the detective agency to find a synchronized line of men, presumably detectives, all wearing tuxedos and gliding about in formation. Mosjoukine received praise for his enthusiastic acting and display of emotion.

According to popular myth, when Rudolph Valentino died on August 23, 1926, Hollywood producers began searching for another face or image that might capture some iota of that unique screen presence radiated by "The Great Lover". However, Mosjoukine was signed by Universal before Valentino's death, as the August 14, 1926 edition of Motion Picture News mentions Mosjoukine's role in Michel Strogoff as Universal had just announced that they were bringing the film to the American market. Universal's Laemmle was mentioned as having signed Mosjoukine to come to America that fall.  A few of the French productions which starred Mosjoukine were seen in large U.S. cities, where multitudes of cinemas regularly presented European films, but he was a generally unfamiliar persona to the large majority of American audiences. Universal's Carl Laemmle, who had employed Valentino as a supporting actor in two 1919-1920 films, found out that Mosjoukine was frequently described by the European press as the Russian Valentino.

However, as it turned out, Surrender, filmed in the summer of 1927, did not trust Mosjukine to carry the storyline. He was only the film's co-star, with the top billing and the central role going to Mary Philbin, a popular leading lady of the period who, eighteen months earlier, had the showy role of Christine, the focus of Lon Chaney's obsession and love in The Phantom of the Opera. The recent Russian Revolution was a popular film subject of the time, with the 1926 John Barrymore-Camilla Horn teaming in The Tempest and the Emil Jannings vehicle The Last Command, released three months after Surrender, being two examples of the genre. Since Laemmle's new star was a genuine survivor of the Revolution, it seemed only natural that the story would be set in that milieu.

Symptomatic of Mosjoukine's co-star status, he does not even appear in the first fifteen minutes of the film, which are occupied with the depiction of life in an Eastern European Jewish settlement on the eve of World War I. Eventually, at the centerpiece of the plot Mary Philbin, as the virginal daughter of the village rabbi, is confronted with the startling choice of willingly "surrendering" her maidenhood to Mosjoukine's aristocratic leader of the Cossack detachment sent to wipe out her village, or refusing and seeing him carry out his assignment. While this type of personality fitted into Valentino's past Son of the Sheik characterization of a dominant, forceful lover who initially takes women against their will, until they melt under the radiance of his sheer animal magnetism, it ran against Mosjoukine's European Casanova image as a fatalistically irresistible paramour to whom women flock and "surrender" without any hint of force or threat, but simply because of their inability to resist.

This basic misunderstanding of the dissimilarity between Valentino and Mosjoukine combined with journeyman direction by Edward Sloman and Mary Philbin's unresponsiveness and lack of chemistry with her leading man, consigned the film to a tepid reception by the critics and the public. Although moderately profitable, it was not the money-making hit that Laemmle expected. Mosjoukine received some good notices, but a number of critics doubted his suitability for American audiences. An even more ominous note, however, was sounded at the film's Broadway premiere on 10 October 1927. Another film, playing across the street, had its premiere four days earlier, on 6 October. The Jazz Singer was attracting much bigger audiences than Surrender and, as it was ushering in voice-on-film, would soon sound the death knell for Mosjoukine's career as a silent film star, as his heavy Russian accent eventually dealt a crippling blow to his hopes of continuing in talkies.

Ivan Mosjoukine died of tuberculosis in a Neuilly-sur-Seine clinic.

Stefan Zweig


Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer.

Zweig was born in Vienna, the son of Moritz Zweig (1845–1926), a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer, and Ida Brettauer (1854–1938), a daughter of a Jewish banking family. He was related to the Czech writer Egon Hostovský, who described him as "a very distant relative"; some sources describe them as cousins.

Zweig studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and in 1904 earned a doctoral degree with a thesis on "The Philosophy of Hippolyte Taine". Religion did not play a central role in his education. "My mother and father were Jewish only through accident of birth," Zweig said later in an interview. Yet he did not renounce his Jewish faith and wrote repeatedly on Jews and Jewish themes, as in his story Buchmendel. Zweig had a warm relationship with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, whom he met when Herzl was still literary editor of the Neue Freie Presse, then Vienna's main newspaper; Herzl accepted for publication some of Zweig's early essays. Zweig believed in internationalism and in Europeanism, as The World of Yesterday, his autobiography, makes clear. According to Amos Elon, Zweig called Herzl's book Der Judenstaat an "obtuse text, [a] piece of nonsense."

At the beginning of World War I, patriotic sentiment was widespread, and extended to many German and Austrian Jews: Zweig, as well as Martin Buber and Hermann Cohen, showed support. Zweig served in the Archives of the Ministry of War and adopted a pacifist stand like his friend Romain Rolland, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1915. Zweig married Friderike Maria von Winternitz (born Burger) in 1920; they divorced in 1938. As Friderike Zweig she published a book on her former husband after his death. She later also published a picture book on Zweig. In the late summer of 1939, Zweig married his secretary Elisabet Charlotte "Lotte" Altmann at Bath, England. Zweig's secretary in Salzburg from November 1919 to March 1938 was Anna Meingast (13 May 1881, Vienna – 17 November 1953, Salzburg).


In 1934, following Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Zweig left Austria for England, living first in London, then from 1939 in Bath. Because of the swift advance of Hitler's troops westwards, Zweig and his second wife crossed the Atlantic to the United States, settling in 1940 in New York City; they lived for two months as guests of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, then they rented a house in Ossining, New York.

On 22 August 1940, they moved again to Petrópolis, a German-colonized mountain town 68 kilometres north of Rio de Janeiro. Zweig, feeling increasingly depressed about the situation in Europe and the future for humanity, wrote in a letter to author Jules Romains, "My inner crisis consists in that I am not able to identify myself with the me of passport, the self of exile." On 23 February 1942, the Zweigs were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in the city of Petrópolis, holding hands.

Robert Desnos


Robert Desnos was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.

Robert Desnos was born in Paris on July 4, 1900, the son of a licensed dealer in game and poultry at the Halles market. Another sources state Desnos was the son of a Parisian café owner. Desnos attended commercial college, and started work as a clerk. He also worked as an amanuensis for journalist Jean de Bonnefon. After that he worked as a literary columnist for the newspaper Paris-Soir.

The first poems by Desnos to appear in print were published in 1917 in La Tribune des Jeunes (Platform for Youth) and in 1919 in the avant-garde review Le Trait d'union (Hyphen), and the same year in the Dadaist magazine Littérature. In 1922 he published his first book, a collection of surrealistic aphorisms, with the title Rrose Sélavy (based upon the name (pseudonym) of the popular French artist Marcel Duchamp).

In 1919 he met the poet Benjamin Péret, who introduced him to the Paris Dada group and André Breton, with whom he soon became friends. While working as a literary columnist for Paris-Soir, Desnos was an active member of the Surrealist group and developed a particular talent for automatic writing. He, together with writers such as Louis Aragon and Paul Éluard, would form the literary vanguard of surrealism. André Breton included two photographs of Desnos sleeping in his surrealist novel Nadja. Although he was praised by Breton in his 1924 Manifeste du Surréalisme for being the movement's "prophet", Desnos disagreed with Surrealism's involvement in communist politics, which caused a rift between him and Breton. Desnos continued work as a columnist.

In 1926 he composed The Night of Loveless Nights, a lyric poem dealing with solitude curiously written in classic quatrains, which makes it more like Baudelaire than Breton. Desnos fell in love with Yvonne George, a singer whose obsessed fans made his love impossible. He wrote several poems for her, as well as the erotic surrealist novel La liberté ou l'amour! (1927). Critic Ray Keenoy describes La liberté ou l'amour! as "literary and lyrical in its outpourings of sexual delirium."

By 1929 Breton definitively condemned Desnos, who in turn joined Georges Bataille and Documents, as one of the authors to sign Un Cadavre (A cadaver) attacking "le bœuf Breton" (the ox Breton). He wrote articles on "Modern Imagery", "Avant-garde Cinema" (1929, issue 7), "Pygmalion and the Sphinx" (1930, issue 1), and Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet filmmaker, on his film titled The General Line (1930, issue 4).

His career in radio began in 1932 with a show dedicated to Fantômas. During that time, he became friends with Picasso, Hemingway, Artaud and John Dos Passos; published many critical reviews on jazz and cinema; and became increasingly involved in politics. He wrote for many periodicals, including Littérature, La Révolution surréaliste and Variétés. Besides his numerous collections of poems, he published three novels, Deuil pour deuil (1924), La Liberté ou l'amour! (1927) and Le vin est tiré (1943); a play, La Place de l'étoile (1928; revised 1944); and a film script, L'Étoile de mer (1928), which was directed by Man Ray that same year.

During World War II, Desnos was an active member of the French Résistance network Réseau AGIR, under the direction of Michel Hollard, often publishing under pseudonyms. For Réseau Agir, Desnos provided information collected during his job at the journal Aujourd'hui and made false identity papers, and was arrested by the Gestapo on February 22, 1944.  He was first deported to the German concentration camps of Auschwitz in occupied Poland, then Buchenwald, Flossenburg in Germany and finally to Terezín (Theresienstadt) in occupied Czechoslovakia in 1945.

Desnos died in "Malá pevnost", which was an inner part of Terezín used only for political prisoners, from typhoid, a month after the camp's liberation.

Mervyn LeRoy


Mervyn LeRoy was an American film director, film producer, author, and occasional actor.

LeRoy was born in San Francisco on October 15, 1900 to Jewish parents Edna (née Armer) and Harry LeRoy. His family was financially ruined by the 1906 earthquake that destroyed his father's import-export business. To make money, young Mervyn sold newspapers in front of the Alcazar Theater after his dad's death in 1910. From this newspaper sales location, he was given a bit part for a play. Through his winning a Charlie Chaplin impersonation contest, he moved into vaudeville then minor parts in silent movies.

LeRoy worked in costumes, processing labs and as a camera assistant until he became a gag writer and actor in silent films, including The Ten Commandments in 1923. LeRoy credits Ten Commandments director, Cecil B. DeMille, for inspiring him to become a director: "As the top director of the era, DeMille had been the magnet that had drawn me to his set as often as I could go."[5] Leroy also credits DeMille for teaching him the directing techniques required to make his own films.

His first directing job was in 1928's No Place to Go. When his movies made lots of money without costing too much, he became well received in the movie business. He directed two key films which launched Edward G. Robinson into major stardom, the Oscar-nominated critique of tabloid journalism Five Star Final (1931), and the classic gangster film Little Caesar (1931), which made his mark. From that point forward, LeRoy would be responsible for a diverse variety of films as a director and producer. LeRoy ended up working at Warner Bros.. In 1938 he was chosen as head of production at MGM, where he was responsible for the decision to make The Wizard of Oz.

In the 1950s, LeRoy directed such musicals as Lovely to Look At, Million Dollar Mermaid, Latin Lovers and Rose Marie. He moved to Warner Brothers, where he was responsible for such famous films as Mister Roberts, The Bad Seed, No Time for Sergeants, The FBI Story and Gypsy. He was nominated in 1943 for Best Director for Random Harvest, and in 1940 as the producer of The Wizard of Oz. In addition, he received an honorary Oscar in 1946 for The House I Live In, "for tolerance short subject", and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1976.

A total of eight movies Mervyn LeRoy directed or co-directed were nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, one of the highest numbers among all directors. LeRoy married three times and had many relationships with Hollywood actresses. He was first married to Elizabeth Edna Murphy in 1927, which ended in divorce in 1933. During their separation, LeRoy dated Ginger Rogers, but they ended the relationship and stayed lifelong friends. In 1934, he married Doris Warner, the daughter of Warner Bros. founder, Harry Warner. The couple had one son, Warner LeRoy and one daughter, Linda LeRoy Janklow (married to Morton L. Janklow). His son, Warner LeRoy, became a restaurateur. The marriage ended in divorce in 1942. In 1946, he married Kathryn "Kitty" Priest Rand, a gentile who was previously married to Sidney M. Spiegel (the co-founder of Essaness Theatres and grandson of Joseph Spiegel); and restaurateur to Ernie Byfield). They remained married until his death. LeRoy also sold his Bel Air, Los Angeles home to Johnny Carson.

LeRoy died natural causes and heart issues in Beverly Hills, California at age 86.

Rouben Mamoulian


Rouben Zachary Mamoulian was an Armenian-American film and theatre director.

Mamoulian was born in Tbilisi, Georgia to an Armenian family. His mother Virginia was a director of the Armenian theater, and his father, Zachary Mamoulian, was a bank president. Mamoulian relocated to England and started directing plays in London in 1922. He was brought to America the next year by Vladimir Rosing to teach at the Eastman School of Music and was involved in directing opera and theatre.

In 1925, Mamoulian was head of the School of Drama, where Martha Graham was also working at the time. Among other performances, together they produced a short two-color film called The Flute of Krishna, featuring Eastman students. Mamoulian left Eastman shortly after and Graham chose to leave also, even though she was asked to stay on. In 1930, Mamoulian became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Child star Jackie Cooper stated in his autobiography that Rouben Mamoulian was his uncle, and this fact helped establish Cooper's early movie career.  Mamoulian began his Broadway director career with a production of DuBose Heyward's Porgy, which opened on October 10, 1927. He directed Wings Over Europe from late 1928 to 1929. He directed the revival of Porgy in 1929 along with George Gershwin's operatic treatment, Porgy and Bess, which opened on October 10, 1935. Mamoulian was also the first to stage such notable Broadway works as Oklahoma! (1943), Carousel (1945) and Lost in the Stars (1949).

He directed his first feature film in 1929, Applause, which was one of the earliest talkies. It was a landmark film owing to Mamoulian's innovative use of camera movement and sound, and these qualities were carried through to his other films released in the 1930s. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) benefits from having been made before the Production Code came into full force, and is regularly considered the best version of Robert Louis Stevenson's tale. Queen Christina (1933) was the last film Greta Garbo made with John Gilbert, and also benefits from being made before the Production Code came into full force. The musical film Love Me Tonight was released in 1932.

He directed the first three-strip Technicolor film, Becky Sharp (1935), based on Thackeray's Vanity Fair, as well as the 1937 musical High, Wide, and Handsome. His next two films earned him wide admiration, The Mark of Zorro (1940) and Blood and Sand (1941), both remakes of silent films. Blood and Sand, on bullfighting, was filmed in Technicolor, and used color schemes based on the work of Spanish artists such as Diego Velázquez and El Greco. His foray into screwball comedy genre in 1942 was a success with Rings on Her Fingers starring Henry Fonda and Gene Tierney. Mamoulian's last completed musical film was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 1957 film version of the Cole Porter musical Silk Stockings. This had been one of Porter's less successful stage musicals and was based on the 1939 Greta Garbo classic Ninotchka. The film Silk Stockings starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, with Janis Paige and Peter Lorre in support.

Mamoulian's film directing career came to an end when he was fired from two consecutive films, Porgy and Bess (1959) and Cleopatra (1963). He had previously been fired as director of Laura (1944). After directing the highly successful original stage productions of Oklahoma! and Carousel, he worked on only a few other theatrical productions, such as St. Louis Woman, which introduced Pearl Bailey to Broadway audiences. He was personally recruited by Directors Guild of America (DGA) co-founder King Vidor in 1936 to help unionize fellow movie directors. Mamoulian's lifelong allegiance to the DGA, and more so his general unwillingness to compromise, contributed to his being targeted in Hollywood blacklisting of the 1950’s.

He died on December 4, 1987 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital of natural causes at the age of 90 in Woodland Hills, California.