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 Thomas Johnston Taylor

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.

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.