Giovanni Maria Flick

Giovanni Maria Flick is an Italian journalist, politician, and jurist.

Flick was born in Cirié, Piedmont, to a Roman Catholic, half-ethnic German family, as the fifth of seven children.

He began his education at the Jesuit liceo, and gained a diploma in law at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. He then practiced (1964–1975) at the Rome tribunal, as a judge, then as a prosecutor, was a professor at the University of Perugia, the University of Messina, and, from 1980, the LUISS University of Rome, and also started a career as a lawyer. He contributed editorials to Il Sole 24 Ore and La Stampa.

He was Minister of Justice in Romano Prodi's cabinet in 1996–1998, and presented the Italian Parliament with projects of organic laws meant to implement major judicial reforms which were almost entirely adopted by 1999 (including laws that made sentencing easier for misdemeanors). His experience as Minister got him named Italian representative to the European Commission of Human Rights, during the second Massimo D'Alema cabinet. In 2000, he was chosen by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi to the office of judge in the Constitutional Court of Italy.

Beniamino "Nino" Andreatta

Beniamino "Nino" Andreatta was an Italian economist and politician.

He was a member of the center right Christian Democrat and one of the founders of the center right Italian People's Party in 1994 and of the Ulivo (The Olive Tree (Italy)) coalition in 1996.

At the Liceo Classico Giovanni Prati di Trento was a school friend of Giorgio Grigolli, then President of the Autonomous Province of Trento.

After graduating in law from University of Padua in 1950, receiving the award for "best graduate of the year", he later completed his studies in economics at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, and as a visiting scholar at Cambridge.

In 1961, after his marriage to his wife Giana, he went to India on behalf of MIT, as a consultant to the Planning Commission of the government of Jawaharlal Nehru .

The following year he became a full professor. During his academic career he taught at the Catholic University of Milan as a volunteer assistant, and at the Universities of Urbino, Trento (in 1968, during the student protests) and Bologna. In Bologna founded the Institute of Economics and the Faculty of Political Sciences. Among his students and collaborators many brilliant economists, including Romano Prodi that from 1963 became his assistant.

He had a long association with Bruno Kessler, president of the Province of Trento from 1960 to 1974, on the theme of autonomy.

In 1972 he was among the founders, with Paul Sylos Labini, of the University of Calabria in Rende (province of Cosenza), a campus on the Anglo-Saxon model to stimulate the growth of the South.

In 1974 Andreatta founded in Bologna "Prometeia", an association to analyze the Italian economy, followed in 1976 by Agenzia di Ricerche e Legislazione» di Roma (Arel), with Ferrante Pierantoni, and others, a cross-party group of intellectuals, politicians and entrepreneurs dedicated to the debate on political and economic issues.

Thanks to the results achieved in the academia, in the 1960s he became economic adviser to Aldo Moro, coming into contact with the group of economists, including Giuliano Amato, Francesco Forte, Siro Lombardini, Giorgio Ruffolo, Franco Momigliano and Alessandro Pizzorno, who then gravitated around the Socialist deputy Antonio Giolitti .

The proximity to Aldo Moro favored his political rise within the Christian Democrats, and from 1976 to 1992 was a member of Parliament for the Christian Democrats (DC).

He held several ministerial posts: in 1979 he was Minister of the Budget and Economic Planning in the first government of Francesco Cossiga and without portfolio "special assignment" in the second government led by Cossiga (August 1979 - October 1980 ).

He was Treasury Secretary from October 1980 to December 1982 in the government of Arnaldo Forlani and the two governments of Giovanni Spadolini. In July 1982 a quarrel with the socialist Minister of Finance Rino Formica brought down the Spadolini government. He did not participate in the following governments of Bettino Craxi and Giulio Andreotti, especially since he was skeptical of the economic policies that these adopted.

His stay at the Treasury coincided with some of the most critical years in the history of contemporary Italy. Andreatta sanctioned the separation of the Bank of Italy by the Italian Ministry of the Treasury, and when in 1981 the P2 the scandal was revealed, he was adamant in removing officials and managers who appeared in the list seized from Licio Gelli. With the onset of the scandal of the IOR of Roberto Calvi and Paul Marcinkus, Andreatta imposed the dissolution of the Banco Ambrosiano, ignoring political and media pressures. Andreatta himself held a historic speech in Parliament publicly reporting responsibilities of the Vatican bank and its leaders. In the eighties, he was also chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

He was vice president of the European People's Party from 1984 to 1987, and was close to Helmut Kohl and his Christian Democratic Union .

He returned to power in 1992, in the wake of the scandal of Tangentopoli who had alienated many politicians, as Minister of the Budget with the interim of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno in the first government of Giuliano Amato, He was then foreign minister in the government of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi from April 1993 to March 1994, and in this role he advanced a proposal for reform of the ' UN.

With the Second Republic Andreatta became leader in the Chamber of Deputies of the People's Party, becoming a leader of the former Christian Democrats siding with the Progressives against the Berlusconi government.

He was one of the main proponents and supporters of the birth of the Olive Tree coalition.
Andreatta was throughout his career a promoter of a mixed economic system and between the pupils of his main school of thought the most important was Romano Prodi, which he sponsored as a guide for the center-left coalition after the fall of the first Berlusconi government in 1995.

Prodi nominated him as defense minister in his first government (May 1996 - October 1998 ), where Andreatta made a number of significant proposals: the reform of the General Staff, the 'abolition of conscription, the reform of the civil service. He launched Operazione Alba (a peacekeeping and humanitarian aid mission to Albania entirely managed by European forces) and proposed ideas to build and organize a European defense forces.

After the fall of the Prodi government in 1998, he founded "Charter 14 June", an association which aimed to broaden the basis of democratic consensus and to reduce the power of parties. During the election campaign for the European elections of 1999, he supported an alliance between the PPI and the Democrats.

On December 15, 1999, during a parliamentary session for the vote of the budget, he had a serious heart attack and ended up in a coma. Andreatta suffered from cerebral hypoxia for twenty minutes, incurring permanent damage.

On 1 January 2000 he was transferred on board a military transport from St. James to St. Orsola-Malpighi Hospital of Bologna.

Andreatta until his death never regained consciousness, dying after more than seven years on 26 March 2007 in the intensive care unit of the Policlinico S. Orsola Bologna.

Lawrence Norcross

Lawrence Norcross was headmaster of Highbury Grove boys' comprehensive in north London, which was at the heart of the battle to preserve state schools from the grip of Left-wing activists.

When the future Tory minister Sir Rhodes Boyson was elected an MP in 1974, Norcross, his deputy at Highbury Grove, found himself excluded from the shortlist of applicants for the post of head on a technicality by The Inner London Education Authority (Ilea). The governors responded by refusing to interview the seven candidates on the grounds that they were "trendies" with no great interest in discipline. Six months later Norcross was confirmed in the position.

Settling in, he explained that he planned to run the school like Boyson, with uniforms, homework and a tradition of hard work. "I believe in a healthy emphasis on conformity to requirements," he said, and that meant using the cane "occasionally but not excessively" in cases of serious or repeated offences.

He proceeded to invite parents to attend classes on how to help children with their English and arithmetic at home; banned a community sex education project, called Grapevine; announced that he was sending his own daughter to a girls' grammar; and was elected an "additional member" of the private schools' Headmasters' Conference.

A highly effective speaker despite a stammer, Norcross was also a vigorous contributor to the letters' column of The Daily Telegraph. He wrote about his constant problems with local government advisers and inspectors. He denounced "armchair Red Guards" who wanted to control candidates entering the teaching profession and joined a committee for the defence of independent schools.
Frances Morrell, the Ilea leader, responded by saying that inspectors had criticised Highbury Grove for failing standards and that Norcross had refused to implement their findings, adding: "It is very much easier for someone like him to attack other people than to put his own house in order."
More serious, she supported several attempts to change the ethos of Highbury Grove by amalgamating it with other schools. These threats were seen off by vigorous protests, not least by immigrant parents.

Norcross had an initial input into the Conservatives' first Education Act in 1980. Then, during a period when the party's attention was diverted elsewhere, he published, with Fred Naylor, The ILEA: a Case for Reform (1981) and The ILEA after the Abolition of the GLC (1983); he also helped to draft proposals for school prospectuses, the publication of GCE results and the assisted places scheme, which were introduced by a successor Act eight years later.
Shortly before the 1987 general election, he gave a well-publicised fillip to the Tory campaign by resigning his post five years early, protesting against Ilea's increasingly politically correct policies: "I am sick and tired of being lectured and hectored at by callow youths who feel that they have discovered some really fundamental truth that has been hidden from the rest of us since the beginning of time."

Though the Thatcher government had not provided the support for his educational views that many expected from a Conservative government, Norcross gave enormous encouragement to fellow teachers by preventing the janissaries of the Left from forcing the gates of Highbury Grove.
Lawrence John Charles Norcross was born in Peterborough on April 14 1927, the son of an electrician who died young in a motorcycle crash. Lawrie left school at 14 to join the Navy, and trained to be a signaller at HMS Arethusa before seeing action in the Far East.

A member of the extreme Left by the time he extricated himself from the service, he joined the Communist Party and was a union activist in the printing industry. He then went to Ruskin College, Oxford, before studying English at Leeds University under the Marxist Professor Arnold Kettle. Tearing up his party card the day he graduated, Norcross's Left-wing views steadily melted away as he first taught at Singlegate and Abbey Wood Schools before becoming a housemaster at Battersea County School and then joining Highbury Grove.

After resigning as headmaster he sat on several quangos, such as the National Council for Educational Standards; the Primary and Secondary Education Trust; the Grant Maintained Schools Trust; and the National Committee for Educational Standards. He also advised the Institute of Economic Affairs, and founded the John Ireland Society to champion the work of that neglected composer.

Norcross, who was appointed OBE in 1986, retired to Warwickshire. An ardent cricket fan, he claimed to be equally addicted to John Donne and Benny Hill, and used to say that his best job had been delivering beer around Surrey after he left the Navy.
Despite having had a lung removed as a young man, he was a smoker for many years, smoking a pipe in front of his wife and cigarettes everywhere else. "If this is the only way I've deceived my wife, I haven't done too badly," he would tell friends.

Lawrie Norcross died on January 30. His wife, Margaret Wallace, whom he married in 1959, died last year, and he is survived by their three sons and one daughter.

References:

The Telegraph; Obituaries
5:42PM BST 27 Apr 2010

John Dobrée Pascoe

John Dobrée Pascoe was a New Zealand mountaineer, photographer, writer, editor, historian and archivist.

Pascoe was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1908; his twin brother was Paul, who would later become a notable architect. John Pascoe received his education at Sumner School and Christ's College. He joined his father's law firm and studied the subject, but did not graduate.

Pascoe was bored with legal work, so he enquired with Joe Heenan, the under-secretary for the Department of Internal Affairs, whether there were employment opportunities. Pascoe was put on a team working on the 1940 centennial publications, and he thus moved to Wellington. Pascoe was the founding secretary of the National Historic Places Trust in 1955. In 1960 he was controller of the Wildlife Branch. As National Archivist, he convinced the government statistician to keep the 1966 census forms for future research. Unlike most other countries, New Zealand had never kept its census forms, and upon Pascoe's initiative, the 1976 and 1986 forms were subsequently also kept and are in secure storage.

Pascoe climbed extensively throughout the South Island of New Zealand conquering many previously unclimbed peaks. It is claimed he conquered over 100 peaks, of which some 23 were previously unclimbed. For his work on New Zealand mountaineering, literature, mapping and photography, he was made a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Pascoe never climbed without his camera and notebook, records from which contributed to a stream of publications.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.

A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and emerged as a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century. He directed the United States government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, realigning American politics into the Fifth Party System and defining American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century. His third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II. He is often rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U.S. Presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Roosevelt was born in 1882 to a prominent Dutch-American New York family and attended Groton School. He went on to graduate from Harvard College in 1903 and attended Columbia Law School before practicing law in New York City. In 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, and the couple went on to have six children. He won election to the New York State Senate in 1910, and then served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. Roosevelt was James M. Cox's running mate on the Democratic Party's 1920 national ticket, but Cox was defeated by Warren G. Harding. In 1921, Roosevelt contracted a paralytic illness, which left his legs permanently paralyzed. He attempted to recover from the illness and founded the treatment center in Warm Springs, Georgia for people with poliomyelitis. Roosevelt returned to public office by winning election as Governor of New York in 1928. He was in office from 1929 to 1933 and served as a reform governor, promoting programs to combat the economic crisis besetting the United States at the time.

In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican President Herbert Hoover in a landslide. Roosevelt took office while the United States was in the midst of the worst economic crisis in its history. During the first 100 days of the 73rd United States Congress, Roosevelt spearheaded unprecedented federal legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders that instituted the New Deal—a variety of programs designed to produce relief, recovery, and reform. He created numerous programs to provide relief to the unemployed and farmers while seeking economic recovery with the National Recovery Administration and other programs. He also instituted major regulatory reforms related to finance, communications, and labor, and presided over the end of Prohibition. The economy improved rapidly from 1933–1937 and Roosevelt won a landslide re-election in 1936, but the economy relapsed into a deep recession in 1937–1938. After the 1936 election, Roosevelt galvanized opposition by seeking passage of the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, which would have expanded the size of the Supreme Court of the United States. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in 1937 prevented passage of that bill and blocked the implementation of further New Deal programs and reforms. Major surviving programs and legislation implemented under Roosevelt include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Social Security.

Roosevelt ran for re-election in 1940, and his victory made him the first and only president to serve for more than two terms. With World War II looming after 1938 with the Japanese invasion of China and the aggression of Nazi Germany, Roosevelt gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union while remaining officially neutral. Following the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which he famously called "a date which will live in infamy", Roosevelt obtained a declaration of war on Japan the next day, and a few days later, on Germany and Italy. Assisted by his top aide Harry Hopkins, and with very strong national support, he worked closely with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in leading the Allies against the Axis Powers. He supervised the mobilization of the U.S. economy to support the war effort and implemented a Germany first strategy that focused on the defeat of Germany over Japan. He also initiated the development of the world's first atomic bomb and worked with the other Allied leaders to lay the groundwork for the United Nations and other post-war institutions. Roosevelt's physical health seriously declined during the war years, and he died in April 1945, 11 weeks into his fourth term. The Axis Powers surrendered to the Allies in the months following Roosevelt's death, during the presidency of Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman.

Godfried Bomans

Godfried Jan Arnold Bomans was a popular Dutch author and television personality and a prominent Dutch catholic. Much of his work remains untranslated into English.

Godfried Bomans was born in The Hague and grew up in and around Haarlem, where his father had a law office. As a pupil in high school Bomans showed literary interest; he became editor of school newspapers and published short stories, even in literary and student magazines. He originally studied law at the University of Amsterdam (1933–1938; LL.B.) and then until 1942 psychology and philosophy at the University of Nijmegen, but spent his entire life writing.

In 1943 he quit his studies and moved back to Haarlem. There he helped save a number of Jews, for which he received the distinction Righteous Among the Nations. He is best known for his books of modern-day fairy tales and his short, humorous pieces full of wit, parody and mild irony. In 1950 he began an artist's club in Haarlem called Teisterbant, that became better known for its literary influences rather than other arts. He was friends with leading Haarlem artists and writers, and was "best man" for local artist Anton Heyboer in 1953. He was a widely read author in the 1950s and 1960s, but he is not mentioned in most histories of Dutch literature and did not receive a single literary prize. Nevertheless, a seven-volume edition of his collected Works was published between 1996 and 1999. His phantasy book Erik, or the Little Insect Book (1940), widely read during the German occupation of the Netherlands (1940–1945), was made into a film in 2004.

After the war, he became known in the Netherlands for his series on the hilarious adventures of Pa Pinkelman and Tante Pollewop, published in De Avonturen van Pa Pinkelman (1946) and Avonturen van Tante Pollewop (1948), both illustrated by Carol Voges. These were syndicalized in the then catholic newspaper de Volkskrant. For that paper he also wrote a unique two-column column on the front page on Saturdays, until a row with the then editor Jan van der Pluym in 1967, who wanted to break loose from the paper's catholic background, put an end to that.

Aside from his fairy tales and humorous books, Bomans also produced numerous collections of essays and criticism. During the 1950s he wrote a very entertaining travel book about Rome – Wandelingen door Rome (Walks Through Rome).

His radio and television appearances were mainly in the role of an eccentric wit on discussion panels and in game shows. He was one of the first writers in the Netherlands to appear regularly on television. He became a media personality, a new phenomenon in the late fifties and early sixties of the 20th century. This contributed to his popularity, but hardly to any respect among the 'critical' literary elite who frowned upon these less serious appearances.

A memorable event in the history of Dutch television was a live comment by Bomans. In October 1963 he was invited to the Edison Award-ceremony of the Grand Gala du Disque Populaire. One of the performing artists was Marlene Dietrich. Bomans stood next to the diva that he admired and told a frolicking anecdote ending with the famous line (attributed by him in this anecdote to a mumbling "very old little man" sitting next to him in the cinema): "I wish my wife had just one leg like that...". He was also well-known and admired for his Sinterklaas-stories and impersonations.

Being a staunch admirer of the works of Charles Dickens, he was a founder member (in 1956) of the Haarlem Branch of the Dickens Fellowship, of which he became a Life President later on. In 1969 The Dickens Fellowship London made him a Vice-President (an Honorary Member) to recognize his efforts to promote Dickens' works. An anthology of his collected writings on Dickens was published posthumously in February 1972.

Bomans died on 22 December 1971 at Bloemendaal, aged 58, from a heart attack and was buried on 24 December on the Sint-Adelbertskerkhof (Saint Adelbert Cemetery) in Bloemendaal.

Gerrit Holdijk

Gerrit Holdijk was a Dutch jurist and politician of the Reformed Political Party (SGP).

Holdijk was born in Uddel, a village in the Veluwe region. He studied notary at a post-secondary level, and also law at Utrecht University. Until his retirement at the age of 65 he was performing a judicial practice.

Belonging to the Reformed Association in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, he was a member of its executive committee since 1983.

On behalf of his party he was a member of the States-Provincial of Gelderland from 1987 to 2011. He was also a member of the Senate from 1986 to 1987 and again from 1991 to 2015. As a senator he was dealing with matters in the field of justice, home affairs and agriculture.

On 30 November 2015 he died in his hometown of a serious illness at the age of 71.

Holdijk was well known for pipe smoking.

André van der Louw

Arie Andries (André) van der Louw was a Dutch politician and director.

Van der Louw was born in The Hague as the son of the milk farmer Cornelis van der Louw and Sjouke Eker. He followed the Mulo and the Middle East trade fair school in The Hague, and was in his youth board member of the Labor Youth Center (AJC), about which he later wrote the book Red as your heart . At the age of 16, he became a member of the PvdA.

Van der Louw started his career at the Hague Institute for Development. From 1957 to 1971 he worked as a press officer at VARA, and in 1965 he became editor of the youth magazine Hitweek, the predecessor of the magazine Aloha. Because he was 32 years older than the rest of the editors, and because of his pipe had a paternal appearance, he soon became the de facto chairman of the editors.

At the same time he worked at VARA he was active in the PvdA. Together with Tom Pauka, Jan Nagel and Han Lammer, he was the pioneer of the New Links renewal movement, and co-author of the manifesto 'Ten over red'. Van der Louw hoped to be able to renew the PvdA from within. When he was elected on March 15, 1969 with six other New Left members during a tumultuous party congress, a member of the party board (Van der Louw became vice president), he experienced this as the success of his strategy. His delight in this he expressed in a dance through the congress hall, which has since been known as Van der Louw's prophecy. Van der Louw was chairman of the PvdA from 1971 to 1974.

In 1974 he became Mayor of Rotterdam. At that time, the PvdA had a clear majority of the population for years, and Van der Louw profiled itself by exposing the red flag on May 1 and releasing the municipal staff. Van der Louw was a popular and competent mayor. In 1981, Van der Louw was asked by PvdA leader Joop den Uyl as Minister of CRM to join the Cabinet of Agt-Den Uyl. Van der Louw made the proposal to employ young people in a job plan for young people called "community action plan". Angry young activists then spit his front yard.  The ministry did not agree, Van der Louw was convinced that Den Uyl was "misled" and made the wrong choice. He was clearly unhappy.

The government of Agt-Den Uyl was abandoned after eight months, and in 1982 Van der Louw took a short time in the Lower House. Van der Louw was then approached to become mayor of Amsterdam. That job eventually went to another former minister, Ed van Thijn.

From 1982, he fulfilled various governing functions: Chairman of the Public Body Rijnmond (1983-1986), a body soon canceled after his appointment, section chairman paid football KNVB (1986-1989), Broadcasting Board (1986-1988), Media Council (1988 -1994), and the NOS (as chairman, 1994-1997).

Van der Louw had repeatedly spoken in the PvdA. In 1991, he began the Social Democratic Renewal Platform that sought to renew the party. This renewal movement was founded in The Red Hat and was therefore also called the Red Hat Group. The weekly magazine Elsevier spoke of the gang of four: Hans Kombrink, André van der Louw, Eduard Bomhoff, and Maurice de Hond; who would be fond of Wim Kok's leadership.
He died at the age of 72 in his hometown of Scheveningen.

Georgi Dimitrov

Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov, was a Bulgarian communist politician. He was the first communist leader of Bulgaria, from 1946 to 1949. Dimitrov led the Communist International from 1934 to 1943. He was a theorist of capitalism who expanded Lenin's ideas by arguing that fascism was the dictatorship of the most reactionary elements of financial capitalism.

Dimitrov was born in Kovachevtsi in today's Pernik Province, the first of eight children, to working class parents from Pirin Macedonia (a mother from Bansko and a father from Razlog). His mother, Parashkeva Doseva, was a Protestant Christian, and his family is sometimes described as Protestant. The family moved to Radomir and then to Sofia. Dimitrov trained as a composer and became active in the labor movement in the Bulgarian capital.

Dimitrov joined the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1902, and in 1903 followed Dimitar Blagoev and his wing, as it formed the Social Democratic Labour Party of Bulgaria ("The Narrow Party"). This party became the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1919, when it affiliated to Bolshevism and the Comintern. From 1904 to 1923, he was Secretary of the Trade Unions Federation.

In June 1923, when Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski was deposed through a coup d'état, Stamboliyski's Communist allies, who were initially reluctant to intervene, organized an uprising against Aleksandar Tsankov. Dimitrov took charge of the revolutionary activities, and managed to resist the clampdown for a whole week. He and the leadership fled to Yugoslavia and received a death sentence in absentia. Under various pseudonyms, he lived in the Soviet Union until 1929, when he relocated to Germany, where he was given charge of the Central European section of the Comintern.

In 1932 Dimitrov was appointed Secretary General of the World Committee Against War and Fascism, replacing Willi Münzenberg.  In 1933 he was arrested in Berlin for alleged complicity in setting the Reichstag on fire (see Reichstag fire). Dimitrov famously decided to refuse counsel and defend himself against his Nazi accusers, primarily Hermann Göring, using the trial as an opportunity to defend the ideology of communism.

During the Leipzig Trial, Dimitrov's calm conduct of his defence and the accusations he directed at his prosecutors won him world renown. On August 24, 1942, for instance, the American newspaper The Milwaukee Journal declared that in the Leipzig Trial, Dimitrov displayed "the most magnificent exhibition of moral courage even shown anywhere." In Europe, a popular saying spread across the Continent: “There is only one brave man in Germany, and he is a Bulgarian.”

After his fame grew in the wake of the Leipzig Trial, Joseph Stalin appointed Dimitrov the head of the Comintern in 1934, just two years before the outbreak of hostilities in Spain. In 1935, at the 7th Comintern Congress, Dimitrov spoke for Stalin when he advocated the Popular Front strategy, meant to represent Soviet ideology as mainstream Anti-Fascism — one that was later employed during the Spanish Civil War.

In 1944, Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria after 22 years in exile and became leader of the Communist party there. After the onset of undisguised Communist rule in 1946, Dimitrov succeeded Kimon Georgiev as Prime Minister, while keeping his Soviet Union citizenship. Dimitrov started negotiating with Josip Broz Tito on the creation of a Federation of the Southern Slavs, which had been underway since November 1944 between the Bulgarian and Yugoslav Communist leaderships. The idea was based on the idea that Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were the only two homelands of the Southern Slavs, separated from the rest of the Slavic world. The idea eventually resulted in the 1947 Bled accord, signed by Dimitrov and Tito, which called for abandoning frontier travel barriers, arranging for a future customs union, and Yugoslavia's unilateral forgiveness of Bulgarian war reparations. The preliminary plan for the federation included the incorporation of the Blagoevgrad Region ("Pirin Macedonia") into the Socialist Republic of Macedonia and the return of the Western Outlands from Serbia to Bulgaria. In anticipation of this, Bulgaria accepted teachers from Yugoslavia who started to teach the newly codified Macedonian language in the schools in Pirin Macedonia and issued the order that the Bulgarians of the Blagoevgrad Region should claim а Macedonian identity.

However, differences soon emerged between Tito and Dimitrov with regard to both the future joint country and the Macedonian question. Whereas Dimitrov envisaged a state where Yugoslavia and Bulgaria would be placed on an equal footing and Macedonia would be more or less attached to Bulgaria, Tito saw Bulgaria as a seventh republic in an enlarged Yugoslavia tightly ruled from Belgrade. Their differences also extended to the national character of the Macedonians - whereas Dimitrov considered them to be an offshoot of the Bulgarians, Tito regarded them as an independent nation which had nothing to do whatsoever with the Bulgarians. Thus the initial tolerance for the Macedonization of Pirin Macedonia gradually grew into outright alarm.

By January 1948, Tito's and Dimitrov's plans had become an obstacle to Stalin's aspirations for total control over the new Eastern Bloc. Stalin invited Tito and Dimitrov to Moscow regarding the recent rapprochement between the two countries. Dimitrov accepted the invitation, but Tito refused, and sent Edvard Kardelj, his close associate, instead. The resulting fall-out between Stalin and Tito in 1948 gave the Bulgarian Government an eagerly-awaited opportunity of denouncing Yugoslav policy in Macedonia as expansionistic and of revising its policy on the Macedonian question. The ideas of a Balkan Federation and a United Macedonia were abandoned, the Macedonian teachers were expelled and teaching of Macedonian throughout the province was discontinued. Despite the fallout, Yugoslavia did not reverse its position on renouncing Bulgarian war reparations, as defined in the 1947 Bled accord.

Dimitrov died on 2 July 1949 in the Barvikha sanatorium near Moscow.

Oliver Trickett

Oliver Trickett, surveyor and speleologist, was born on 29 May 1847 at Bridlington, Yorkshire, England, son of Rev. Edward Trickett, Baptist minister, and his wife Henrietta, née Young. Arriving in Victoria aged about 15, Oliver was appointed clerk in the Office of Mines, Melbourne, on 28 August 1865. He qualified as a mineral surveyor in 1870 and by 1875 was acting secretary of the Board of Examiners (Mines) in Collins Street. Moving to New South Wales next year, he was licensed as a surveyor by the Department of Lands.

After completing surveys in various parts of the colony, in March 1880 Trickett joined the Department of Mines. By the late 1880s he had begun private practice as a mining surveyor, broker and agent at 114 Pitt Street, Sydney, and was also associated with R. W. Harvey in a Sydney general auctioning business. Trickett's agency managed mines in New South Wales (mainly around Broken Hill) and some in Queensland and the Northern Territory. With Harvey, he published the Handy Register of Mining Companies (1889). Trickett became agent for Chaffey Bros Ltd's 'Irrigation Colonies'; with four others, he ran the East Lambton Colliery Co. which went bankrupt in 1892.

Rejoining the Department of Mines in June as a draftsman and surveyor in the geological survey branch, Trickett developed an interest in the limestone caves of New South Wales. To assist in surveying them, he designed an adaptation of the plane table to be used in conjunction with the theodolite. In addition, he gave advice on protecting the caves' formations and on improving them for tourists. On 8 June 1893 at the Catholic presbytery, Miller Street, North Sydney, he married Melbourne-born Elizabeth Anne Collins (d.1933).

He published Notes on the Limestone Caves of New South Wales (1898) and guides to the Jenolan (1899), Wombeyan, Wellington and Yarrangobilly (1906) caves. Other works included a large-scale tourist map of the Blue Mountains (1909), a Bibliography of the Economic Minerals of New South Wales (1919) for prospectors, and an article on limestone caves in the Australian Encyclopaedia (1925).

Eventually chief draftsman in the branch, Trickett prepared numerous maps, sections, diagrams and models. Among his most notable achievements were (Sir) Edgeworth David's maps of the Maitland coalfield, a model of Sydney Harbour, a geological map of the State (1915) and a model of the Broken Hill lode which won a gold medal at the Panama Pacific International Exposition (1915). His limestone cave models, many executed in his spare time, were popular exhibits in the Mining and Geological Museum, Sydney.

An untiring worker in both field and office, Trickett—though of a retiring disposition—was well-known to tourists all over the State as the genial 'cave man'; his speleological work was fundamental to the scientific study of Australian karst topography. Survived by two sons and four daughters, he died on 31 March 1934 at his Crows Nest home and was buried with Presbyterian forms in the Catholic section of Northern Suburbs cemetery.

Select Bibliography
Department of Mines (New South Wales), Annual Report, 1896-1918
Bulletin, 12 Sept 1907
Sydney Morning Herald, 3 Apr 1934.

Jack Kamen

Jack Kamen was an American illustrator for books, magazines, comic books and advertising, known for his work illustrating crime, horror, humor, suspense and science fiction stories for EC Comics, for his work in advertising, and for the onscreen artwork he contributed to the 1982 horror anthology film Creepshow.

Jack Kamen was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York on May 29, 1920. Kamen's first professional job was as an assistant to a sculptor working for the Texas Centennial. He studied sculpture with Agop Agopoff and was a student of Harvey Dunn, George Brandt Bridgman and William C. McNulty. When Kamen attended classes at the Art Students League and the Grand Central Art School, he paid for his studies by painting theatrical scenery, decorating fashion mannequins and creating sculptures.

After initially getting EC assignments to illustrate romance comics, he soon became one of the most prolific EC artists, drawing crime, horror, humor, suspense and science fiction stories. He was known for his drawings of attractive women. Describing Kamen's understated style, EC editor Al Feldstein said, "We gave Kamen those stories where the All-American girl and guy are married and then chop each other to pieces."[2] In Tales from the Crypt #31, Kamen drew a semi-autobiographical self-satire, "Kamen's Kalamity", later adapted to HBO's Tales from the Crypt TV series as "Korman's Kalamity". The story depicted the transition from romance to horror by Kamen, who called it "my favorite story".

After EC's line of comics fell victim to industry censorship in 1954–55, it was Kamen who suggested to the publisher that the company could avoid the newly imposed Comics Code Authority strictures with a pricier magazine format, which Kamen dubbed Picto-Fiction.  After leaving EC, Kamen began drawing Sunday supplement illustrations and creating advertising art for a wide variety of clients: Esquire Shoe Polish, Mack Trucks, Pan American Airlines, Playtex, RCA, Smith Corona and Sylvania.

He also drew all the comic book artwork for Stephen King and George A. Romero's 1982 horror anthology film Creepshow, King and Romero's homage to the EC horror comics.

Kamen died at his home in Boca Raton on August 5, 2008 from causes related to cancer.

Hiram Percy Maxim

Hiram Percy Maxim was an American radio pioneer and inventor, and co-founder of the American Radio Relay League.

He was the son of Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, inventor of the Maxim Machine gun. In addition, he was the nephew of Hudson Maxim, an inventor of explosives and ballistic propellants. He had two sisters, Florence Maxim, who married George Albert Cutter, and Adelaide Maxim, who married Eldon Joubert, Ignace Paderewski's piano tuner. Hiram was a mechanical engineering graduate, class of 1886, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Beginning in 1892 Maxim worked at the American Projectile Company of Lynn, Massachusetts, and tinkered nights on his own internal combustion engine. He admitted his ignorance of engine developments in Germany by Maybach, Daimler, and Benz, and he later explained that he "was staggered at the amount of time required to build one small engine." Furthermore, he was appalled once he finally achieved combustion. The engine "shook and trembled and rattled and clattered, spat oil, fire, smoke, and smell, and to a person who disliked machinery naturally, and who had been brought up to the fine elegance and perfection of fine horse carriages, it was revolting."

In early 1895 Maxim visited Colonel Albert Pope in Hartford which led to his being hired for the Motor Vehicle Division of the Pope Manufacturing Company. His vehicle was not ready in time for the Times-Herald race in November, but Maxim was able to get to Chicago and serve as an umpire. He rode with the Morris and Salom entry, the Electrobat II.

In 1899, with Maxim at the controls, the Pope Columbia, a gasoline-powered automobile, won the first closed-circuit automobile race in the US at Branford, Connecticut. Columbia continued to produce gasoline cars until 1913, and was also a major manufacturer of early electric automobiles and trucks.

Maxim is also noted as the inventor of the "Maxim Silencer", a silencer for firearms as well as of a muffler for gasoline engines.

He created the ARRL in 1914 as a response to the lack of an organized group of "relay" stations to pass messages via amateur radio. Relaying messages allowed them to travel farther than any single station's reach at the time.

Maxim founded the Amateur Cinema League in New York in 1926; he was elected president. The Amateur Cinema League published a monthly journal, Movie Makers.

Maxim wrote an amusing account of his youth in the book A Genius in the Family: Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim Through a Small Son's Eyes. This book was adapted to the screen as So Goes My Love. H. P. Maxim recounted his days as an automobile pioneer in his book Horseless Carriage Days and also wrote the book Life's Place in the Cosmos, an overview of contemporary science that surmised life existed outside of earth.

Hiram Percy Maxim was returning to his home in Hartford, Connecticut, in February 1936, from a trip to California to visit the Lick Observatory. He fell ill and was taken from the train to a hospital in La Junta, Colorado, where he died the following day, February 17, 1936. Hiram P. Maxim was buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery (Maryland) in Hagerstown, Maryland, in the Hamilton family plot.

Charles Lightoller

Charles Herbert Lightoller was the second officer on board the RMS Titanic and a decorated Royal Navy officer. He was the most senior member of the crew to survive the Titanic disaster.

As an officer in charge of loading passengers into lifeboats, Lightoller not only enforced with utmost strictness the "women and children first" protocol; he also effectively extended it to mean "women and children only". In pursuance of this principle, Lightoller lowered lifeboats with empty seats if there were no women or children waiting to board. Indeed, Lightoller is known to have permitted exactly one adult male passenger to board a lifeboat, namely Arthur Godfrey Peuchen, who was permitted to board a lifeboat (no.6) that was otherwise full of women, because he had sailing experience and could help navigate the boat. Lightoller stayed until the last, was sucked against a grate and held until he was under water, but then was blown from the grate from a rush of warm air as a boiler exploded. He clung to a capsized collapsible boat with 30 others until their rescue.

Lightoller served as an officer of the Royal Navy during the First World War and while commanding HMS Garry, rammed and sank the German U-Boat UB-110, for which Lightoller was decorated for gallantry.

Later, in retirement, he further distinguished himself in the Second World War by providing and sailing as a volunteer on one of the "little ships". His personal yacht had been requisitioned by the Admiralty for wartime service, and during the Dunkirk evacuation he sailed it there and back personally.

David Blair

David Blair was a British merchant seaman with the White Star Line, which had reassigned him from the RMS Titanic just before its maiden voyage. Due to his hasty departure, he accidentally kept a key to a storage locker believed to contain binoculars intended for use by the crow's nest lookout.

Blair, from Broughty Ferry, was originally appointed the Second Officer of the Titanic. He had been with the ship during its trial voyages to test the ship's seaworthiness and the final journey from its place of construction in Belfast.

The White Star Line, however, decided that with the Titanic's sister ship, the RMS Olympic, currently undergoing layovers, to have the Olympic's Chief Officer, Henry Wilde take the position, citing his experience with ships of the Titanic's class as a reason. Chief Officer William Murdoch and First Officer Charles Lightoller were thus demoted one-step in rank, removing Blair from the command roster. Blair wrote about the disappointment of losing his position on the Titanic in a postcard to his sister-in-law days before the Titanic left for Southampton, remarking, "This is a magnificent ship, I feel very disappointed I am not to make her first voyage."

When Blair left the Titanic on 9 April 1912 he took with him the key to the Crow's nest locker, presumably by accident. This is believed to be a reason why there were no binoculars available with the crew during the voyage. According to other versions, the binoculars were not in the locker, but were left behind in his cabin, or he took them along with him when he left the ship, as they were his personal set of binoculars. The absence of binoculars being a factor in the sinking of the Titanic, became a point of investigation in the subsequent inquiries into the sinking.

The lookouts at the time of the collision, Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, maintained during the inquiries that they were informed they were to have no binoculars during the voyage. Fleet, when asked by a commission of inquiry composed of members of the United States Congress whether or not they would have seen the iceberg from farther away, replied that he would have seen it "a bit sooner". When asked "How much sooner?” he responded: "Well, enough to get out of the way." According to legal expert Gary Slapper, though, Blair's "forgetfulness wasn’t a material reason for the disaster" as there were other intervening causes.

He was First Officer on the SS Majestic in 1913 when a coaler jumped overboard; the night before a fellow crewmember had succeeded in drowning himself. While a lifeboat was organized, Blair jumped into the ocean waters and swam toward the man, who was now swimming for the ship. Though the boat reached the man first, Blair was commended for his action in the New York Times and received money from the passengers and a medal from the Royal Humane Society.

Blair (and Charles Lightoller, who survived the Titanic disaster) served aboard the RMS Oceanic when it ran aground in 1914. As the navigator, Blair received the blame for the grounding at the resulting court martial.

Blair died on 10 January 1955 in Hendon, Middlesex.

Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie

Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie was a Canadian lawyer and judge.

Begbie was born on the island of Mauritius, thereafter raised and educated in the United Kingdom. In 1858, Begbie became the first Chief Justice of the Crown Colony of British Columbia in colonial times and in the first decades after confederation of British Columbia.

Begbie served as the first Judge of the Supreme Court, Colony of British Columbia 1858 to 1866 and then, in the same capacity in the Supreme Court, the United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia from 1866 to 1870. He was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Colonies from 1870 to 1871 and, following British Columbia joining confederation in 1871, he served as the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the new Province of British Columbia until his death on June 11, 1894.

The son of an Army Colonel, Begbie was born on a British ship on route to the island of Mauritius, where he lived until he was seven, returning with his parents to Great Britain where he pursued his education. From the age of eleven to seventeen he was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey where he held the school number 328. His brother Thomas Stirling Begbie attended the school at the same time. Begbie received his first degree from Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge, where he studied mathematics and the classics. He was involved in a great number of extracurricular activities, including singing and acting in amateur productions, dining societies, playing chess, rowing, and tennis. After Cambridge, Begbie went on to study law at Lincoln's Inn. He established a successful law practice in London before heading to British Columbia for a new position in government.

Begbie reached Fort Victoria on November 16, 1858. He was sworn into office in Fort Langley on November 19, as the new Colony of British Columbia was proclaimed. Given the influx of prospectors and others during Fraser Canyon Gold Rush and the following Cariboo Gold Rush of 1861, Begbie played a crucial role in the establishment of law and order throughout the new colony.

Begbie was made a Knight Bachelor according to the London Gazette of November 19, 1875

During his years on the bench, Begbie traveled throughout British Columbia, on foot and later on horseback administering justice in sometimes informal circumstances but he is said to have always worn his judicial robes and wig when court was in session.

During his early years, he played a role in government including drafting legislation such as the Aliens Act (1859), the Gold Fields Act (1859), and the Pre-emption Act (1860).

In 1860, Begbie found a white Californian man by the name of William Marshall guilty of assaulting a First Nations man based only on the testimony of First Nations people, the first time this had ever occurred. He spoke several languages and is said to have been able to conduct trials in several aboriginal languages without the use of an interpreter. He also allowed people of other cultures to swear an oath of truth on an object sacred to them in place of the Bible.

In 1864, Begbie presided over the murder trial of five Tsilhqot'in men who were part of the Chilcotin War. The five were found guilty and sentenced to hang. In 2014, the British Columbia government exonerated the Chilcotin leaders. Premier Christy Clark stated, "We confirm without reservation that these six Tsilhqot'in chiefs are fully exonerated for any crime or wrongdoing."

He was also an active naturalist. He was known to record observations during his travel, including drawing maps and bridge construction drawings. He sang opera. In 1875, he was made a Knight Bachelor. Begbie was implicated in land dealings at Cottonwood, between Quesnel and Barkerville, but denied any wrongdoing in what became known as the Cottonwood Scandal.

Begbie continued his judicial duties well into his last illness, dying in Victoria, British Columbia on June 11, 1894.