Darren Clarke

Darren Christopher Clarke is a professional golfer from Northern Ireland who currently plays on the European Tour and has previously played on the PGA Tour. He has won 21 tournaments worldwide on a number of golf's main tours including the European Tour, the PGA Tour, the Sunshine Tour and the Japan Golf Tour. His biggest victory came when he won the 2011 Open Championship at Royal St George's in England, his first major win after more than 20 years and 54 attempts.

Clarke has also won two World Golf Championship events, most notably the 2000 WGC-Andersen Consulting Match Play Championship, when he defeated Tiger Woods in the final. Clarke was ranked in the top-10 of the Official World Golf Ranking for 43 weeks between 2000 and 2002. His highest finish on the European Tour money list is second, which he achieved in 1998, 2000 and 2003. Clarke is currently ranked as the seventh highest career money winner on the European Tour.

Clarke has represented Ireland as both an amateur and as a professional, notably at the World Cup and Alfred Dunhill Cup, and was a member of five consecutive European Ryder Cup teams between 1997 and 2006.

Dante Fascell

Dante Bruno Fascell served as an American politician from the state of Florida.


Dante Fascell was born in Bridgehampton, New York. In 1925, his family moved to Florida. In 1938, he graduated from the University of Miami School of Law. Fascell was a brother of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity and the Kappa Sigma Fraternity. While a University of Miami law student, Fascell was inducted into its Iron Arrow Honor Society, the University of Miami's highest honor.

Fascell served in the Florida National Guard during World War II, serving in the African, Sicilian, and Italian Campaigns.

Fascell's constituents elected him to the Florida House of Representatives in 1950. In 1954 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat in a district representing Dade County, Florida. Fascell refused to sign the Southern Manifesto in 1956. Fascell began as a supporter of the Vietnam War, but he soon spoke out against the war. Fascell cosponsored the War Powers Act of 1973 and he won aid for Cuban-Americans who had settled in his district. He served as the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs from 1984 to 1993. He worked to repeal the Clark Amendment, allowing the U.S. government to send aid to UNITA rebels in Angola, as a partner in the Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly lobbying firm.

Fascell worked to champion the creation of Biscayne National Park, south of Miami. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. The visitor center in the park is named after Representative Fascell. Similarly, a public park located in South Miami is named for him. The Dante B. Fascell North-South Center Act of 1991 established the prestigious think-tank at the University of Miami.

During the time between 1981 and 1988, Shirley Mae Albertus was Fascell's administrative assistant.

Fascell retired from the House after his 19th term ended in 1993. When President Bill Clinton took office he proposed to nominate Fascell as the United States Ambassador to Italy, however Fascell declined for family reasons as he had developed colorectal cancer. On October 29, 1998 Fascell was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton. He died the following month from colorectal cancer, at the age of 81.

Bob Simms

Robert H. Simms, former President and CEO of Bob Simms Associates, Inc., was widely acknowledged as a social engineer/social mechanic. Bob was recognized for his demonstrated skills as a communicator, problem solver, and creator of innovative community programs for public and private sector institutions.

He was the architect of the "Minority Experience" Management Training Program which was featured in the April 1988 Conference of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and "Presstime," the journal of the American Newspaper Publisher's Association. His clients have included: Knight Ridder Institute of Training, USA Today, Newsday, The American Newspaper Publishers Association, The American Society of Newspapers Editors, The Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News, The Charlotte Observer, Press-Telegram (Long Beach, Ca), The Dade County Public Schools, Metro Dade County, Williamson Cadillac Company, and others.

Previously in his former company, Bob Simms Associates, Inc., he served as a contractor with the U.S. Department of Defense Race Relations Institute at Patrick Air Force Base for four years as a designer of their "field experience." His three day program, "The Miami Inner City Minority Experience," explored the values, culture, strengths and mores of Miami-Dade County's diverse population. His models offered constructive alternatives for understanding and valuing the contribution of each group.

Prior to his work as an external consultant, Bob served as Executive Director of the Metropolitan Dade County Community Relations Board for 16 years. His community involvement covers the broad spectrum of Dade County's civic institutions and organizations, ranging from the Orange Bowl Committee, the University of Miami, Board of Trustees, to community based organizations. Bob was currently the Advisor on Diversity at Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove, Florida.

Bob Simms died on Dec. 15, 2014, at the age of 87.

Peter Eisenman

Peter Eisenman is an American architect. Considered one of the New York Five, Eisenman is known for his writing and speaking about architecture as well as his designs, which have been called high modernist or deconstructive.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a lawyer, politician, and the founder of Pakistan. Jinnah served as leader of the All-India Muslim League from 1913 until Pakistan's independence on 14 August 1947, and then as Pakistan's first Governor-General until his death. He is revered in Pakistan as Quaid-i-Azam (Urdu: قائد اعظم‎‎; Great Leader) and Baba-i-Qaum (Urdu: بابائے قوم‎‎; Father of the Nation). His birthday is observed as a national holiday in Pakistan.

Born at Wazir Mansion in Karachi, Jinnah was trained as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn in London. Upon his return to British India, he enrolled at the Bombay High Court, and took an interest in national politics, which eventually replaced his legal practice. Jinnah rose to prominence in the Indian National Congress in the first two decades of the 20th century. In these early years of his political career, Jinnah advocated Hindu–Muslim unity, helping to shape the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the All-India Muslim League, in which Jinnah had also become prominent. Jinnah became a key leader in the All India Home Rule League, and proposed a fourteen-point constitutional reform plan to safeguard the political rights of Muslims. In 1920, however, Jinnah resigned from the Congress when it agreed to follow a campaign of satyagraha, which he regarded as political anarchy.

By 1940, Jinnah had come to believe that Muslims of the Indian subcontinent should have their own state. In that year, the Muslim League, led by Jinnah, passed the Lahore Resolution, demanding a separate nation. During the Second World War, the League gained strength while leaders of the Congress were imprisoned, and in the elections held shortly after the war, it won most of the seats reserved for Muslims. Ultimately, the Congress and the Muslim League could not reach a power-sharing formula for the subcontinent to be united as a single state, leading all parties to agree to the independence of a predominantly Hindu India, and for a Muslim-majority state of Pakistan.

As the first Governor-General of Pakistan, Jinnah worked to establish the new nation's government and policies, and to aid the millions of Muslim migrants who had emigrated from the new nation of India to Pakistan after independence, personally supervising the establishment of refugee camps. Jinnah died at age 71 in September 1948, just over a year after Pakistan gained independence from the United Kingdom

Erwin Chargaff

Erwin Chargaff was an Austro-Hungarian biochemist that immigrated to the United States during the Nazi era and was a professor of biochemistry at Columbia University medical school. Through careful experimentation, Chargaff discovered two rules that helped lead to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.

The first rule was that in DNA the number of guanine units is equal to the number of cytosine units, and the number of adenine units is equal to the number of thymine units. This hinted at the base pair makeup of DNA.

The second rule was that the relative amounts of guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine bases vary from one species to another. This hinted that DNA rather than protein could be the genetic material.

Vivien Thomas

Vivien Theodore Thomas  was an African-American surgical technician who developed the procedures used to treat blue baby syndrome, now known as cyanotic heart disease, in the 1940s. He was the assistant to surgeon Alfred Blalock in Blalock's experimental animal laboratory at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and later at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He served as supervisor of the surgical laboratories at Johns Hopkins for 35 years. In 1976 Hopkins awarded him an honorary doctorate and named him an instructor of surgery for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Without any education past high school, Thomas rose above poverty and racism to become a cardiac surgery pioneer and a teacher of operative techniques to many of the country's most prominent surgeons.

Helmut Schmidt

Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt was a German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who served as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1974 to 1982.

Before becoming Chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence (1969–1972) and as Minister of Finance (1972–1974). In the latter role he gained credit for his financial policies. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting Foreign Minister. As Chancellor, he focused on international affairs, seeking "political unification of Europe in partnership with the United States." He was an energetic diplomat who sought European co-operation and international economic co-ordination. He was re-elected chancellor in 1976 and 1980, but his coalition fell apart in 1982 with the switch by his coalition allies, the Free Democratic Party.

He retired from Parliament in 1986, after clashing with the SPD's left wing, who opposed him on defence and economic issues. In 1986 he was a leading proponent of European monetary union and a European Central Bank.

Peter Struck

Peter Struck was the German Minister of Defence under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder from 2002 to 2005. A lawyer, Struck was a member of the Social Democratic Party.

Struck studied law at the universities of Göttingen and Hamburg. In 1971 he graduated to Dr. iur. (Doctor of Laws). Peter Struck was a member of the Bundestag from 1980 until 2009. He first became a member of the Bundestag in the 1980 West German elections, via the party list, for the constituency of Celle-Uelzen. Due to his growing popularity, in the years 1998, 2002 and 2005, Struck was directly elected. From 1990 to 1998 he was whip (Parlamentarischer Geschäftsführer) of the SPD parliamentary group. From 1998 to 2002 he was chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. In 2002 Struck succeeded Rudolf Scharping as Federal Minister of Defence, and served in that position until 2005.

During Struck’s tenure, Germany was trying to revamp its military into a nimbler fighting force capable of responding to smaller, regional conflicts. While being a strong supporter of conscription, Struck announced in 2003 that Germany would reduce its military by more than 10 percent by 2010, leaving 250,000 troops. Also, he ordered a reduction in Germany's inventory of heavy Leopard 2 tanks from almost 2,000 to 350. At the time, he said the cuts were necessary because of strained finances and a need to adapt to new security needs; in 2003, he had to work with a defence budget of a mere 1.48 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product, compared with the 2 percent average of his European Union counterparts. Under Struck’s plan, the military's civilian work force was to be reduced by 45,000, to 75,000, and as many as 100 military bases closed.

During his time at the Defence Ministry, Struck oversaw the early years of Germany's engagement in Afghanistan, famously coining the phrase that "German security is being defended in the Hindu Kush". In 2004, he said “there will be a clear no from the German side” to any request to place the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and Operation Enduring Freedom under a unified command, expressing fears a unified command could be a step towards merging the two forces and that political opposition and military dangers could increase if their soldiers were identified with the US-led coalition.

After Germany joined with France in April 2003 to announce the creation of a European Union defense group with a military planning unit separate from NATO, Struck later held that no separate headquarters was necessary and that a planning staff for eventual operations under solely European auspices should be attached to NATO. In 2003, Struck dismissed General Reinhard Günzel, the commander of a German Special Forces army unit, after he praised Martin Hohmann, a conservative Member of Parliament, for a speech that had been widely criticized as anti-Semitic; Struck called Günzel a "lone, confused general who agreed with an even more confused statement."

After accusations began appearing in the German press that conscripts in the German Army had been physically abused by trainers at some of the country’s army bases, Struck announced in December 2004 that 30 or 40 trainers were being investigated. Following a 2004 trip to the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, Struck was hospitalized with a mild stroke. After the 2005 elections, Struck became Fraktionschef (chairman) of the SPD parliamentary group once again, until his retirement in 2009. Between 2007 and 2009, Struck served as co-chair (alongside Günther Oettinger) of the Second Commission on the modernization of the federal state (Föderalismuskommission II), which had been established to reform the division of powers between federal and state authorities in Germany. After retiring from active politics following the 2009 elections, Struck served as chairman of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a political think tank with connections to the SPD.

Struck suffered from poor health in the last several years of his career and died of a heart attack in the Charité hospital in Berlin on December 19, 2012.

Malcolm Fraser

John Malcolm Fraser was an Australian politician who was the 22nd Prime Minister of Australia and the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1975 to 1983.

Elected to the Australian Parliament seat of Wannon in 1955 at the age of 25, Fraser was appointed to the Cabinet in 1966. After rising to become Minister for Defence in 1969, he was regarded as a contender for the leadership of the Liberal Party following their defeat in 1972, but he lost that contest to Billy Snedden. Fraser challenged Snedden in 1975 and was elected Leader of the Liberal Party, becoming the Leader of the Opposition.

Fraser was appointed as caretaker prime minister on November 11, 1975 by the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, following the controversial dismissal of the Whitlam Government in which he played a key role. He went on to win the largest parliamentary majority as a proportion of seats in Australian political history at the subsequent election. After two further election victories in 1977 and 1980, he was defeated by the Bob Hawke-led Australian Labor Party in 1983 and left parliament shortly after.

Fraser was the last Liberal Party Prime Minister to practise Keynesian economics. In retirement, Fraser became involved in international relief and humanitarian aid issues and, domestically, as a forthright liberal voice for human rights. Shortly after Tony Abbott won the 2009 Liberal Party leadership spill, Fraser ended his Liberal Party membership, stating the party was "no longer a liberal party but a conservative party".

On 20 March 2015 Fraser died at the age of 84 after a brief illness.

Keir Hardie

James Keir Hardie was a Scottish socialist, politician, and trade unionist. He was the founder of the Labour Party, the first Leader of the Labour Party and the first ever Labour Member of Parliament.

Hardie started work at the age of seven, but was rigorously educated at home by his parents, and later attended night school. Working in the mines, he soon became a full-time trade union organiser. His leadership of the failed Ayrshire miners’ strike of 1881 made such an impact on the mine-owners that they granted important concessions for fear of future industrial action.

Hardie was a dedicated Georgist for a number of years and a member of the Scottish Land Restoration League. It was "through the single tax" on land monopoly that Hardie gradually became a Fabian socialist. He reasoned that "whatever the idea may be, State socialism is necessary as a stage in the development of the ideal."

Having won the parliamentary seat of West Ham South as an independent candidate in 1892, he helped to form the Independent Labour Party (ILP) the following year. In 1900 he helped to form the union-based Labour Representation Committee, soon renamed the Labour Party, with which the ILP later merged. Hardie was also a lay preacher and temperance campaigner, who supported votes for women, self-rule for India, home-rule for Scotland, and an end to segregation in South Africa. At the outbreak of World War I, he tried to organise a pacifist general strike, but died soon afterwards.

Lord Ralph Harris

Ralph Harris, Baron Harris of High Cross was a British economist. He was head of the Institute of Economic Affairs from 1957 to 1988.

Harris, the son of a tramways inspector, was "one of four children born to working-class parents on a council estate in Tottenham, north-east London". He was educated at Tottenham Grammar School. He read Economics at Queens' College, Cambridge, graduating with a first-class degree. At Cambridge he was influenced by Stanley Dennison, "who introduced him to the works of Friedrich von Hayek."

After working at the Conservative Political Centre at Conservative Central Office, Harris was a lecturer in political economy at St Andrews University from 1949 to 1965. He was an unsuccessful Conservative Party candidate for Kirkcaldy in 1951 and for Edinburgh Central in 1955, and became a leader writer for the Glasgow Herald in 1956.

Harris became general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in 1957. He remained in this post until 1988, when he stepped down to become its chairman and was replaced by Graham Mather. Harris was then a founding president of the IEA from 1990 to his death. The IEA was set up by Antony Fisher and Oliver Smedley in 1955. Friedrich Hayek had suggested that an intellectual counterweight was necessary to combat the prevailing Keynesian consensus "Butskellism" of R. A. Butler and Hugh Gaitskell. Harris, together with editorial director Arthur Seldon, built the IEA into a bastion of free market liberal economics. The IEA developed links with economists such as Friedrich Hayek, Gottfried Haberler, Harry Johnson, Milton Friedman, George Stigler and James Buchanan, and published many pamphlets and papers on public finance issues, such as taxation, pensions, education, health, transport, and exchange rates.

In 1979, during Margaret Thatcher's first few months in power, he was made a life peer as Baron Harris of High Cross, of Tottenham in Greater London. Yet, despite his strong affiliation with Tory free-marketeers, Harris sat on the crossbenches in the House of Lords to show his independence from any political party.

He served on the council of the University of Buckingham from 1980 until 1995. It was founded in 1976 following a call from Harris and Seldon in 1968 for an independent university. Harris was Secretary of the Mont Pelerin Society from 1967, and its president from 1982 to 1984. He was "a moving spirit in the Wincott Foundation and the founding of the Social Affairs Unit". He did not like to be described as a "Thatcherite", but was a founder of the No Turning Back group in 1985. Harris became a Eurosceptic, and was chairman of the Bruges Group from 1989 to 1991. He was a director of Rupert Murdoch's Times Newspapers Company from 1988 to 2001, although he read and wrote for The Daily Telegraph. Nonetheless, Harris described Murdoch as the "Saviour of what we used to call Fleet Street".

Harris helped set up a fighting fund so Neil Hamilton could sue the BBC for libel in 1986 and Mohamed Al Fayed for libel in 1999. He was chairman of Civitas from 2000. He also supported the poll tax.

Harris was interviewed about his work at the IEA and the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series Tory! Tory! Tory!.

A pipe smoker, he was a chairman of smokers' rights campaigners, FOREST, and its president in 2003. He was not convinced that passive smoking was dangerous and published and campaigned against the banning of smoking on trains from Brighton to Victoria station in 1995, although he admitted that he was not a frequent rail user himself. Harris died of an aortic aneurysm in London.

Sylvester Stallone

Michael Sylvester "Sly" Gardenzio Stallone is an American actor and filmmaker. He is well known for his Hollywood action roles, including boxer Rocky Balboa, the title character of the Rocky series' seven films from 1976 to 2015; soldier John Rambo from the four Rambo films, released between 1982 and 2008; and Barney Ross in the three The Expendables films from 2010 to 2014. He wrote or co-wrote most of the 14 films in all three franchises, and directed many of the films.

Stallone's film Rocky was inducted into the National Film Registry as well as having its film props placed in the Smithsonian Museum. Stallone's use of the front entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Rocky series led the area to be nicknamed the Rocky Steps. Philadelphia has a statue of his Rocky character placed permanently near the museum. It was announced on December 7, 2010 that Stallone was voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the non-participant category.

In 1977, Stallone was nominated for two Academy Awards for Rocky, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. He became the third man in history to receive these two nominations for the same film, after Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles. He received positive reviews, as well as his first Golden Globe Award win and a third Academy Award nomination, for reprising the role of Rocky Balboa in Ryan Coogler's 2015 film Creed.

Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades but who was mostly popular in the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in more than 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama. In his later years, Curtis made numerous television appearances.

Although his early film roles were partly the result of his good looks, by the latter half of the 1950s he became a strong screen presence with the range to act in numerous dramatic and comedy roles. In his earliest parts he acted in a string of mediocre films, including swashbucklers, westerns, light comedies, sports films and a musical. However, by the time he starred in Houdini (1953) with his wife Janet Leigh, "his first clear success," notes critic David Thomson, his acting had progressed immensely.

He achieved his first serious recognition as a dramatic actor in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) with co-star Burt Lancaster. The following year he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in The Defiant Ones (1958). Curtis then gave what could arguably be called his best performance: three interrelated roles in the comedy Some Like It Hot (1959). Thomson called it an "outrageous film," and a survey carried out by the American Film Institute voted it the funniest American film ever made. The film co-starred Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe, and was directed by Billy Wilder. That was followed by Blake Edwards’s Operation Petticoat (1959) with Cary Grant. They were both frantic comedies, and displayed his impeccable comic timing. He often collaborated with Edwards on later films. In 1960, Curtis played a supporting role in Spartacus, which became another major hit for him.

His stardom and film career declined considerably after 1960. His most significant dramatic part came in 1968 when he starred in the true-life drama The Boston Strangler, which some consider his last major film role. The part reinforced his reputation as a serious actor with his chilling portrayal of serial killer Albert DeSalvo.

He later starred alongside Roger Moore in the ITC TV series The Persuaders!, with Curtis playing American millionaire Danny Wilde. However, the series was cancelled after twenty-four episodes.

Curtis was the father of actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis by his first wife, actress Janet Leigh.

Donald Gray

Donald Gray was a South African actor, well known for his starring role in the British TV series Mark Saber, for providing the voices of Colonel White, Captain Black and the Mysterons in Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and for being the reason that Donald Marshall Gray changed his name to Charles Gray when he became an actor.

Nelson Olmsted

Nelson Olmsted was an actor in films, recordings, radio and television from the 1950s to the 1970s. Olmsted was best known for an unusual NBC radio series, Sleep No More (1956–57), in which he narrated his own adaptations of terror tales and science-fantasy stories. Ben Grauer was the program's announcer.

After study at the University of Texas, Olmsted began in radio in the late 1930s as an announcer for WBAP in Fort Worth, Texas. When he launched Black Night (1937–39), a late night 30-minute horror series, it was only a local program, but it created a sensation, with mail arriving at WBAP from ten states. A review in Radio News took note of the chilling music (by Gene Baugh) and horrific sound effects (by A.M. Woodford). Produced by Ken Douglass, the series began November 5, 1937 with Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart" and then continued on with original scripts by Virginia Wiltten. Olmsted starred and was heard in a variety of different roles.

Within a year, the impact of Black Night catapulted Olmsted to New York, where he was immediately established as NBC's resident storyteller, a position he held for over a decade, beginning with The World's Greatest Short Stories (1939, 1944, 1947) and Dramas by Olmsted (1940–41).

Olmsted's appearances during the era of live television began in 1950 with The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre and Lights Out, followed by Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (1951). The Philco Television Playhouse (1951–52), Kraft Television Theatre (1951–52), Tales of Tomorrow (1952), Hallmark Hall of Fame (1952), Goodyear Television Playhouse (1953), Robert Montgomery Presents (1953–54), Studio One (1954–55) and NBC Sunday Showcase (1959).

Olmsted was also featured on "The Ohio Story", a series of 10-minute history/biography television programs on stations all over Ohio in the 1950s. He made guest appearances on the CBS court drama series Perry Mason, including the role of murderer Arthur Colemar in the 1960 episode, "The Case of the Treacherous Toupee." He continued in television until the mid-1970s.

His film roles included Middle of the Night (1959), That Touch of Mink (1962), Diary of a Madman (1963), Fitzwilly (1967) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). His last movie was Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell (1977).

Olmsted died on April 8, 1992 at the age of 78 in Torrance, California.

Lord Roy Mason

Roy Mason, Baron Mason of Barnsley was a British Labour politician and Cabinet minister who was Secretary of State for Defence and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the late 1970s.

He was born in Royston on April 18, 1924, and grew up in Carlton, Barnsley, in South Yorkshire. Mason first went down the mines at the age of fourteen and he became a branch official of the National Union of Mineworkers in his early twenties. Aged 26 he studied at the London School of Economics as a mature student on a Trades Union Congress scholarship. He remained in the coal industry until he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for the Barnsley constituency at a by-election in 1953.

Mason was Labour Party spokesman on Home Affairs, Defence and Post Office, 1960-1964. Minister of State at the Board of Trade, 1964-1967. Minister of Defence (Equipment), 1967-1968. Minister of Power, 1968-1969. President of the Board of Trade, 1969-1970. Secretary of State for Defence, 1974-1976. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, 1976–1979

A high-profile politician, Mason's appointment to Northern Ireland was unexpected and seemed to indicate a tougher response from the British Government than that pursued by his predecessor, Merlyn Rees. In late 1976, he told the Labour party conference that "Ulster had had enough of initiatives, White Papers and legislation for the time being, and now needed to be governed firmly and fairly". He rejected both military and political solutions in favor of "justice for all; with equality before the law; and, crucially, with republican terrorism treated as a security problem, and nothing else".

While Secretary of State for Defence Mason had been responsible for the introduction of SAS units into the 'bandit country' of South Armagh. At Stormont Mason was responsible for the tougher role taken by the security forces and authorised an increase in British Army covert tactics with the SAS allowed to operate throughout Northern Ireland. Mason's time in Northern Ireland was characterized by a reduction in violence; "in 1976 there were 297 deaths in Northern Ireland; in the next three years the figures were 111, 80, 120. In 1977 he stood up to militant loyalists attempt to repeat their successful Ulster Workers Council strike tactic of 1974. In the same year he twice attempted to get some movement towards a political settlement from the local political parties but both attempts failed.

Mason's policies in Northern Ireland earned the ire of Irish nationalist MPs. This played a part in the March 1979 vote of no confidence, which the Labour government lost by one vote, precipitating the 1979 general election. Nationalist MP Gerry Fitt abstained in the vote of no confidence, stating that he could not support a government with Mason as its Northern Ireland secretary.

After Labour's election defeat in 1979 Mason came under increasing pressure from leftwingers in his constituency party under the influence of Arthur Scargill but did not countenance joining the Social Democratic Party. Mason received full police protection, over 30 years after leaving office. In 1982 the then Energy Secretary Nigel Lawson suggested to Margaret Thatcher that she should make Mason the next Coal Board chairman, but she refused, instead, Ian MacGregor was appointed.

After his retirement from the House of Commons at the 1987 general election, he was created a life peer on October 20, 1987 taking the title Baron Mason of Barnsley, of Barnsley in South Yorkshire.

He died from a long illness, one day after his 91st birthday, on April 19, 2015.

Sir Campbell Adamson

Sir William Owen Campbell Adamson was a British industrialist who was best known for his work as Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry from 1969 to 1976. He rose through the steel industry where he was in charge of labour relations, and worked as a government adviser during the late 1960s.

Coming to the CBI at the peak of political controversy over the Labour government's attempt to reform trade union law, Adamson held the difficult role of representing industry through the complex struggle over Edward Heath's Industrial Relations Bill. Remarks he made about Government policy on the eve of the February 1974 election were blamed by Heath for the Conservative Party's loss of the election. Adamson was able to unite industry to support the British application to join the European Communities. In later life as Chairman of Abbey National, Adamson led the move to demutualise and convert it from a building society to a bank, and saw an overwhelming majority of the society's members support the move. Also interested in family policy, he set up the Family Policy Studies Centre.

Adamson died on August 21, 2000.

Magnus Magnusson

Magnus Magnusson was an Icelandic journalist, translator, writer and television presenter. He came to prominence as a BBC television journalist, and was best known as the presenter of the BBC television quiz program Mastermind, which he hosted for 25 years. He is also known for his famous catchphrase "I've started so I'll finish", which he said whenever the time ran out while he was reading a question on Mastermind.

Magnus was born in Reykjavík but grew up in Edinburgh, where his father, Sigursteinn Magnússon, was the Icelandic consul. Magnus' Icelandic name at birth was Magnús Sigursteinsson (meaning Magnus, son of Sigursteinn), but in Scotland his family adopted British naming conventions and from childhood he used his father's patronymic as a surname. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and was in the school's marching brass band.

After graduating from Jesus College, Oxford, Magnusson became a reporter with the Scottish Daily Express and The Scotsman. He went freelance in 1967, then joined the British Broadcasting Corporation, presenting programs on history and archaeology (including BC The Archaeology of the Bible Lands), as well as appearing in news programs.

Magnusson presented the long-running quiz show Mastermind from 1972 to 1997. His catchphrase, which the current presenter John Humphrys has continued to use, was "I've started so I'll finish". Magnusson made cameo appearances as himself, hosting Mastermind in Morecambe and Wise as well as the children's series Dizzy Heights and as Magnus Magnesium in The Goodies episode "Frankenfido."

Magnusson ended his 25-year run of hosting Mastermind in 1997, and the original Black Chair was given to him at the end of the production passing to his daughter Sally Magnusson after his death.

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

Magnusson was awarded an honorary knighthood (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1989. He was elected President of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, for a five-year period, at their 94th AGM in October 1995, succeeding Max Nicholson. He also became the founder chairman of Scottish Natural Heritage upon its inception in 1992. He was Lord Rector of Edinburgh University from 1975 to 1978 and later in 2002, became Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University.

In later years, Magnusson also wrote for the New Statesman.  He died on 7 January 2007.

Sir Malcolm Bradbury

Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury was an English author and academic.

Bradbury was born in Sheffield, the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother. The family later moved to Nottingham and in 1943 Bradbury attended West Bridgford Grammar School, where he remained until 1950. He read English at University College, Leicester and gained a first-class degree in English in 1953. He continued his studies at Queen Mary College, University of London, where he gained his MA in 1955.

Between 1955 and 1958 Bradbury moved between teaching posts with the University of Manchester and Indiana University in the United States. He returned to England in 1958 for a major heart operation; such was his heart condition that he was not expected to live beyond middle age. In 1959, while in hospital, he completed his first novel, Eating People is Wrong.

Bradbury married Elizabeth Salt and they had two sons. He took up his first teaching post as an adult-education tutor at the University of Hull. With his study on Evelyn Waugh in 1962 he began his career of writing and editing critical books. From 1961 to 1965 he taught at the University of Birmingham. He completed his PhD in American studies at the University of Manchester in 1962, moving to the University of East Anglia (his second novel, Stepping Westward, appeared in 1965), where he became Professor of American Studies in 1970 and launched the MA in Creative Writing course, attended by both Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro. He published Possibilities: Essays on the State of the Novel in 1973, The History Man in 1975, Who Do You Think You Are? in 1976, Rates of Exchange in 1983 and Cuts: A Very Short Novel in 1987. He retired from academic life in 1995.

Bradbury became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1991 for services to literature and was made a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours 2000, again for services to literature.

Bradbury died at Priscilla Bacon Lodge, Colman Hospital, Norwich, on November 27, 2000 at the age of 68. He was buried on 4 December 2000 in the churchyard of St Mary's parish church, Tasburgh.

Willie John McBride

Willie John McBride is a former rugby union footballer who played as a lock for Ireland and the British and Irish Lions. He played 63 Tests for Ireland including eleven as captain, and toured with the Lions five times — a record that gave him 17 Lions Test caps. He also captained the most successful ever Lions side, which toured South Africa in 1974.

Samuel McLaughlin

Colonel Robert Samuel McLaughlin was an influential Canadian businessman and philanthropist. He started the McLaughlin Motor Car Company in 1907, one of the first major automobile manufacturers in Canada, which evolved into General Motors of Canada.

McLaughlin was born near Bowmanville in the hamlet of Enniskillen, Ontario, the son of Robert McLaughlin and Mary Smith. As a young man, he worked for a short time in a local hardware store, then in 1887 became an apprentice in the upholstery shop of his father's company, McLaughlin Carriage Works, which had opened in 1867 and at one time was the largest manufacturer of horse-drawn buggies and sleighs in the British Empire.

In 1890, McLaughlin took a job at H. H. Babcock, an upholstery company in Watertown, New York. In 1892, McLaughlin and his brother George become junior partners in their father's company. With engines from William C. Durant of Buick, he produced the McLaughlin-Buick Model F, establishing The McLaughlin Motor Car Company, incorporated on November 20, 1907. In 1908, its first full year of operation, it produced 154 cars.

In 1910, he became a director of General Motors. He sold his Chevrolet company stock in 1918, becoming president of General Motors of Canada, which continued to sell cars under the McLaughlin-Buick brand until 1942. He retired in 1945, but remained chairman of the board until his death. He remained on the board of General Motors until the early 1960s, and was coincidentally replaced by Royal Bank of Canada president Earle McLaughlin, his first cousin once removed. His older brother, chemist John J. McLaughlin (1865-1914), founded the Canada Dry company. After his brother's death in 1914, McLaughlin became president of this company briefly until it was sold around 1923.

McLaughlin was appointed honorary lieutenant-colonel of the 34th Ontario Regiment in 1921 and held this position until 1931, at which time he was appointed honorary colonel of same unit, later designated as The Ontario Regiment (RCAC), a reserve armored regiment based in Oshawa. Affectionately known as "Colonel Sam", McLaughlin served as honorary colonel until 1967, thereby becoming the longest continuously-serving colonel in the history of the Canadian Forces.

McLaughlin died on January 6, 1972 at the age of 100 years old in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada.

Paul Vanden Boeynants

Paul Emile François Henri Vanden Boeynants was a Belgian politician. He served as the 41st Prime Minister of Belgium for two brief periods (1966–68 and 1978–79).

Vanden Boeynants was born in Forest / Vorst, a municipality in the Brussels-Capital Region. Active as a businessman in the meat industry, he was a Representative for the PSC-CVP between 1949 and 1979. From 1961 to 1966 he led the Christian democrat PSC-CVP. He led the CEPIC, its conservative fraction.

Vanden Boeynants served as minister for the middle class (1958-1961). In 1966, he became Prime Minister of Belgium; he stayed in this post for two years. From 1972-1979 he served as minister of defense. In 1978–1979 he led another Belgian government. Vanden Boeynants then served as chairman of the PSC (1979-1981). He left politics in 1995, and died of pneumonia after undergoing cardiovascular surgery in 2001.

Pelham Edgar

Oscar Pelham Edgar was a Canadian teacher. He was a full professor and head of the Department of English at the Victoria College, Toronto from 1910 to 1938. He wrote many articles and several monographs on English literature. He had a talent for identifying and encouraging promising new authors. He was an active member of various literary societies, and was the force behind the establishment of the Canadian Writers’ Foundation to help needy authors.

Oscar Pelham Edgar was born on 17 March 1871, second son of James David Edgar and Matilda Ridout Edgar. Both his parents were greatly interested in literature. His father, a lawyer and Liberal politician, was a minor poet. His mother was a historian and feminist. Her biography of Sir Isaac Brock was published in 1904 as a volume in the Makers of Canada series. Pellham Edgar was educated at Upper Canada College. He attended the University of Toronto, where he was a student of W.J. Alexander. He graduated from University College in 1892 with the Governor-General's Medal in Modern Languages.

Pelham Edgar taught at Upper Canada College from 1892 to 1895. In 1893 he married Helen Madeline Boulton. Edgar left Upper Canada College to study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he earned a PhD in 1897. His thesis was about Shelley, a poet who had inspired him as a boy.

The poet Duncan Campbell Scott (1862–1947) was a close friend of Pelham Edgar, and they maintained a correspondence for more than fifty years, starting in the 1890s. Edgar often criticized Scott's major poems before they were published. Scott worked in the Department of Indian Affairs. Scott and Edgar traveled together in Northern Ontario in 1906 on an expedition to make treaties with the Native Americans. Edgar was said to have been acting as secretary, but in fact the trip seems to have been more a holiday.

In the 1900s Edgar and Scott were invited to edit the Makers of Canada series of historical biographies published by George Morang. Neither were particularly well qualified. Edgar had edited a selection of writings by Francis Parkman (1823–1893), but was more interested by the picturesque than the historical elements. He was criticized for his casual editing. In the end most of the serious editing was done by William Dawson LeSueur. The friendship lasted, and Edgar published eight articles on Scott's work between 1895 and 1948.

In 1897 Edgar became a lecturer in the Department of French at Victoria College, Toronto. He was head of the department from 1901 to 1910. In 1902 he started to also give lectures in the Department of English. He taught in the Department of English after 1909, and headed the department from 1912 until he retired in 1938.

Pelham Edgar died in Canton, Ontario, on 7 October 1948 at the age of 77.

C.S. Mott

Charles Stewart Mott was an American businessman, philanthropist and the 50th and 55th Mayor of Flint, Michigan.

Mott was born on June 2, 1875 in Newark, Essex County, N.J. to John Coon Mott and Isabella Turnball Stewart.  C. S. Mott moved to Flint, Michigan in 1907 after an invite by William C. Durant to move his company, Weston-Mott Co. to the city. Weston-Mott later merged with the Buick Motor Company making him the original US partner in the creation of the General Motors Corporation as R.S. McLaughlin had formed an alliance for Canada in 1907. The company was later bought by General Motors in exchange for GM stock.

Mott was Mayor of City of Flint in 1912–1913 and was defeated for reelection in 1914, but was once again elected in 1918. He was Vice-President of General Motors in 1916. In 1920, he ran in the Republican primary for Governor of Michigan. In 1924 and 1940, he was a Michigan delegate to Republican National Convention. He was selected as a Republican Michigan Presidential Elector candidate in 1964.

Mott died on February 18, 1973 at the age of 97 in Flint, Michigan.

Edgar Benson

Edgar John "Ben" Benson was a Canadian politician, businessman, diplomat, and university professor. He held four Cabinet posts, most notably that of Minister of Finance under Pierre Trudeau, where he was instrumental in reforming Canada's income tax law.

After serving overseas in the Second World War as a sergeant in the Royal Canadian Artillery, Benson attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where he obtained his Bachelor of Commerce degree. He became a chartered accountant and partner in the accounting firm of England, Leonard, Macpherson and Company, and co-owner of CKLC. Prior to his entry into politics, he was also a lecturer in Business Administration at Queen's, in the capacity of Assistant Professor of Commerce.

Benson was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1962 general election as the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingston, Ontario. Initially appointed in 1962 as Parliamentary Secretary to then Minister of Finance Walter Gordon, he entered the Cabinet of Prime Minister Lester Pearson in 1964 as Minister of National Revenue, and served concurrently from 1966 to 1968 as the first President of the Treasury Board.

Benson was an early supporter of Pierre Trudeau in the 1968 Liberal leadership campaign to replace the retiring Pearson, and, together with Jean Marchand, was co-chairman of Trudeau's leadership bid. He was later appointed Minister of Finance, serving from 1968 to 1972. Benson's balanced budget for 1969–70 would be the last until Paul Martin's budget of 1997–98. He was also instrumental in rolling out a national medical care plan and supplementary old age pensions and played a key role in federal-provincial relations.


Benson later served as Minister of National Defense from January to August 1972, when he retired from politics, choosing not to run in the 1972 election.  Benson served as President of the Canadian Transport Commission from 1972 to 1982, and as Canadian Ambassador to Ireland from 1982 to 1985. He died on September 2, 2011 at the age of 88.

Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray was an Indian filmmaker and author, widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. Ray was born in the city of Calcutta into a Bengali Brahmo family which was prominent in the field of arts and literature. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948) during a visit to London.

Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. He was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, calligrapher, music composer, graphic designer and film critic. He authored several short stories and novels, primarily aimed at children and adolescents. Feluda, the sleuth, and Professor Shonku, the scientist in his science fiction stories, are popular fictional characters created by him. He was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University.

Ray's first film, Pather Panchali (1955), won eleven international prizes, including the inaugural Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. This film, along with Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959) form The Apu Trilogy. Ray did the scripting, casting, scoring, and editing, and designed his own credit titles and publicity material. Ray received many major awards in his career, including 32 Indian National Film Awards, a Golden Lion, a Golden Bear, 2 Silver Bears, a number of additional awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1992. The Government of India honored him with the Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian award, in 1992.