BIOGRAPHIES

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova (June 23 [O.S. June 11] 1889 — March 5, 1966) - Russian poet.

Akhmatova was the pen name of Anna Andreevna Gorenko, the leader and the heart and soul of St Petersburg tradition of Russian poetry in the course of half a century. Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyric poems to universalized, ingeniously structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935-40), her tragic masterpiece on the Stalinist terror. Her work addresses a variety of themes including time and memory, the fate of creative women, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism.
Akhmatova was born near Odessa. Her childhood does not appear to have been happy; her parents separated in 1905. She was educated in Kiev, Tsarskoe Selo, and the Smolny Institute of St Petersburg. Anna started writing poetry at the age of 11, inspired by her favourite poets: Racine, Pushkin, and Baratynsky. As her father did not want to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name, she had to adopt the surname of one of her Tatar ancestors as a pseudonym.
In 1910, she married the boyish poet Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for hunting lions in Africa, the battlefields of the World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband didn't take her poems seriously and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his. Their son, Lev, born in 1912, was to become a famous historian.
In 1912, she published her first collection, entitled Evening. It contained brief, psychologically taut pieces which English readers may find distantly reminiscent of Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy.
By the time her second collection, the Rosary, appeared in 1914, there were thousands of women composing their poems "after Akhmatova". Her early poems usually picture a man and a woman involved in the most poignant, ambiguous moment of their relationship. Such pieces were much imitated and later parodied by Nabokov and others. Akhmatova was prompted to exclaim: "I taught our women how to speak but don't know how to make them silent".
Nikolay Gumilyov was executed in 1921 for activities considered anti-Soviet; Akhmatova presently remarried Vladimir Shilejko, and then another scholar, Nikolay Punin, who died in the Stalinist camps. After that, she spurned several proposals from the married poet Boris Pasternak.
During the whole period from 1925 to 1952, Akhmatova was effectively silenced, unable to publish poetry. All of her friends either emigrated or were repressed. Her son spent his youth in Stalinist gulags, and she even resorted to publishing several poems in praise of Stalin to secure his release. Their relations remained strained, however.
Only a few people in the West suspected that she was still alive, when she was allowed to publish a collection of new poems in 1940. During the Great Patriotic War, when she witnessed the nightmare of the 900-Day Siege, her patriotic poems found their way to the front pages of the Pravda. After Akhmatova returned to

Leningrad following the Central Asian evacuation in 1944, she was disconcerted with "a terrible ghost that pretended to be my city".
After Stalin's death, Akhmatova's preeminence among Russian poets was grudgingly conceded even by party officials. Akhmatova got a chance to meet some of her pre-revolutionary acquaintances in 1965, when she was allowed to travel to Sicily and England, in order to receive the Taormina prize and the honorary doctoral degree from Oxford University (in the trip she was accompanied by her life-long friend and secretary Lydia Chukovskaya). In 1962, her dacha was visited by Robert Frost.
Akhmatova's reputation continued to grow after her death, and it was in the year of her centenary that one of the greatest poetic monuments of the 20th century, Akhmatova's Requiem, was finally published in her homeland.
There is a museum devoted to Akhmatova at the Fountain House (more properly known as the Sheremetev Palace) on the Fontanka Embankment, where Akhmatova lived from the mid 1920s until 1952.

Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong (05.08.1930 - 25.08.2012) - American astronaut.

Neil Alden Armstrong was born on 5 August 1930 in Wapakoneta, Ohio. There were three children in a family of Viola Louise Engel and Stephen Koenig Armstrong. His father, Stephen Koenig Armstrong, worked as an auditor for the Ohio state government. Neil had younger brother Dean and younger sister June. Because of Stephen Armstrong’s service the family moved from one town to another and after Neil’s birth they lived in twenty different towns. When Neil was two years old his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races. At that time Neil grew fond of flying. The first airplane flight in Neil’s life was in July 1936 when Neil was six years old. It was in Warren, Ohio, when his father took him to go for a ride in a Ford Trimotor.
The final moving of the family was to Wapakoneta in 1944. Neil Armstrong entered Blume High School there. He started to attend flying lessons at the county airport and received the flight certificate at the age of fifteen. It should be noted that Neil Armstrong earned his driver’s license later than the flight certificate. He also was a member of the Boy Scouts and in the end he received the rank of Eagle Scout. From 1947 to 1955 Neil studied at Purdue University.
The first wife of Neil Armstrong was Janet Shearon. He married her on 28 January 1956. They had two children. Son Eric was born in 1957 and daughter Karen was born in 1959, but she died in 1962. In a year son Mark was born. In 1994 their marriage broke down. In 1992 Neil Armstrong met Carol Held Knight who became his second wife. He married her on 12 June 1994 in Ohio.
Neil Armstrong went down in history as an American astronaut, test-pilot and aerospace engineer. He was a United States Navy officer. Neil Armstrong began making a career in aviation and astronautics after serving in the Korean War. Then he served as a test pilot. Neil Armstrong was also university professor.
Neil Armstrong’s first spaceflight was in 1966. He was the command pilot of the NASA Gemini 8 mission. Neil Armstrong and pilot David Scott accomplished the first manned docking of two spacecraft.
The greatest achievement of Neil Armstrong was his second spaceflight in July 1969. On this mission he and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface where they spent 2.5 hours. Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.
After his greatest and last spaceflight Neil Armstrong began to work at the University of Cincinnati as a teacher. In 1979 he resigned. In the next years Neil Armstrong took part in different projects and went into business.
Neil Armstrong underwent surgery on August 7, 2012, to relieve blocked coronary arteries. He died on August 25, in Cincinnati, Ohio, following complications resulting from these cardiovascular procedures.

George Gordon Byron

George Gordon Byron (22.01.1788 - 19.04.1824) - English writer and poet.

George Gordon Byron, who is often referred to as Lord, was a prominent English writer, poet and aristocrat. One of his most renowned characters was Child Harold - his alter ego, who became the prototype of numerous other heroes in European literature. That’s why even after Byron’s death his books were highly-demanded.
The well-known writer was born on January 22nd in 1788 in London. However, his mother soon got divorced and moved with little George to Scotland where her relatives lived. From the very childhood Byron suffered from physical disability, which influenced greatly his life. His right foot was deformed which caused him a limp that resulted in lifelong misery. That’s why he had quite a difficult personality and hysterical character.
In fact, even having such physical disabilities, he voluntarily took part in the Greek War of Independence and therefore was considered a national hero of Greece. Already when the poet was eighteen his first book was published but under a different name. It was a vast collection of poems which he soon refilled with over a hundred of new rhymes and published this time under his own name.
His next book, released in 1809, received a wide response. The same year he left England, as the sum of his debts dramatically increased, and started exploring Europe. Byron visited Spain, Greece, Albania and some other countries. His exciting journey lasted for two years and that was the time when he started working on his successful poem “Child Harold’s Pilgrimage”.
He returned from the trip in 1811 and year later his poem was published. That was the turning point in his career. He suddenly woke up famous. It was an innovative poem in many ways with a new type of literary character in all-European literature. Since then his creative life was rather rich. The new poems and tales in verse were released, among them “The Giaour”, “Hebrew Melodies” etc.
In 1815 Byron married to Anabella Milbenk, who gave birth to his daughter a year later. However this marriage didn’t last; the couple soon divorced. In 1816 he left his native England and moved first to Geneva, then to Venice. The poet led as many would have said an immoral life. At the same time he continued writing new verses: the fourth song of “Child Harold”, the first parts of “Don Giovanni”, “Ode on Venice”, etc.
In April 1819 he met a woman who became his lifelong love. Her name was Countess T. Guiccioli. Although they often moved from one city to another, Byron’s creativity was on high level. During that period he wrote “Cain” (the play, 1820), “The Bronze Age” (1823). In 1820 he joined the movement of Italian Carbonari and in 1823 enthusiastically participated in the struggle for liberty held in Greece.
He spent all his money, possessions and talent to help the local population to gain freedom. In 1823 he fell seriously ill and a year later the great poet died. He tried to get as much as possible out of his life and he always looked for new adventures and experiences. G. G. Byron was buried in Newstead.

Sandra Bullock

Sandra Bullock (26.07.1964) - American actress.

Sandra Annette Bullock (born July 26, 1964) is an American actress and producer who rose to fame in the 1990s, after roles in successful films such as Speed and While You Were Sleeping. She has since established her career with films such as Miss Congeniality and Crash, the second of which received critical acclaim. In 2007, she was ranked as the 14th richest female celebrity with an estimated fortune of $85 million. In 2009, Bullock starred in the most financially successful films of her career, The Proposal and The Blind Side. Bullock was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, and the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side.
Bullock was once engaged to actor Tate Donovan, whom she met while filming Love Potion No. 9; their relationship lasted four years. She previously dated football player Troy Aikman, Austin musician Bob Schneider (for two years), and actors Matthew McConaughey and Ryan Gosling.
Bullock married motorcycle builder and Monster Garage host Jesse James on July 16, 2005. In March 2010, a scandal arose when several women claimed to have had affairs with James during his marriage to Bullock. James’ publicist subsequently announced on March 30, 2010, that James had checked into a rehab facility "to deal with personal issues" and "save his marriage" to Bullock. However on April 28, 2010, it was reported that Bullock had filed for divorce on April 23 in Austin. Their divorce was finalized on June 28, 2010, with "conflict of personalities" cited as the reason.
Bullock announced on April 28, 2010, that she had proceeded with plans to adopt a baby boy born in New Orleans. Bullock and James had begun an initial adoption process four years earlier. The child began living with them in January 2010, but they chose to keep the news private until after the Oscars in March 2010.
In 2013, there were two successful film with Sandra Bullock in the title role - "Cops in skirts"and "Gravity".
Bullock has been a public supporter of the American Red Cross, having donated $1 million to the organization at least four times. Sandra bullock has a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Sandra Bullock (26.07.1964) - American actress.

Johann Sebastian Bach (March 21, 1685 - July 28, 1750) - German composer.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German organist, composer, and musical scholar of the Baroque period, and is almost universally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. His works, noted for their intellectual depth, technical command, and artistic beauty, have provided inspiration to nearly every musician in the European tradition, from Mozart to Schoenberg.
J. S. Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, in 1685. His father, Ambrosius Bach, was the town piper in Eisenach, a post that entailed organizing all the secular music in town as well as participating in church music at the direction of the church organist, and his uncles were also all professional musicians ranging from church organists and court chamber musicians to composers, although Bach would later surpass them all in his art.
Bach's mother died when he was still a young boy and his father suddenly passed away when J. S. Bach was 9, at which time J. S. Bach moved in with his older brother Johann Christoph Bach, who was the organist of Ohrdruf, Germany. While in his brother's house, J. S. Bach copying, studying, and playing music.
While in school and as a young man, Bach's curiosity compelled him to seek out great organists of Germany such as Georg Bцhm, Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Adam Reinken, often taking journeys of considerable length to hear them play. He was also influenced by the work of Nicholas Bruhns. Shortly after graduation (Bach completed Latin school when he was 18, an impressive accomplishment in his day, especially considering that he was the first in his family to finish school), Bach took a post as organist at Arnstadt, Germany, in 1703. He apparently felt cramped in the small town and began to seek his fortune elsewhere. Owing to his virtuosity, he was soon offered a more lucrative organist post in Muhlhausen.
Still not content as organist of Muhlhausen, in 1708, Bach took a position as court organist and concert master at the ducal court in Weimar, Germany. Here he had opportunity to not only play the organ but also compose for it and play a more varied repertoire of concert music with the dukes' ensemble.
In 1723, J. S. Bach was appointed Cantor and Musical Director of St. Thomas church in Leipzig, Germany. This post required him to not only instruct the students of the St. Thomas school in singing but also to provide weekly music at the two main churches in Leipzig. Rising above and beyond the call of duty, Bach endeavored to compose a new church piece, or cantata, every week. On holy days such as Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, Bach produced cantatas of particular brilliance.
Bach and his first wife, Maria Barbara, had seven children together, although several of them died while still very young. Little is known about Maria Barbara. She died suddenly while Bach was travelling with Prince Leopold in July, 1720. While still at Cцthen, Bach met and later married Anna Magdalena, a young soprano. Despite the age difference (she was 17 years his junior), the couple seem to have enjoyed a very happy marriage. Together they had 13 children, although few survived to adulthood.
Later Life and Legacy Having spent much of the 1720s composing weekly cantatas, Bach assembled a sizable repertoire of church music that, with minor revisions and a few additions, allowed him to continue performing impressive Sunday music programs while pursuing other interests in secular music, both vocal and instrumental. Many of these later works were collaborations with Leipzig's Collegium Musicum, but some were increasingly introspective and abstract compositional masterpieces that represent the pinnacle of Bach's art.
During his life time he composed over 1,000 pieces. Bach died on July 28, 1750.

David Beckham

David Beckham (02.05.1975) - English sportsman.

David Beckham is a well-known English footballer, who is now retired. During his career he played for various clubs, including “Manchester United”, “Real Madrid”, “Milan”.  He is especially famous for his excellent performance skills on the field and free kicks. In 2011, he became the highest-paid footballer in the world. Beckham was born on May 2nd, 1975, in London. His mother was a hairdresser and his father worked as a kitchen fitter. As a child, he regularly attended a church with his parents and two sisters. His parents were fans of “Manchester United” and often went to Old Trafford stadium to see the team’s home matches. David inherited this love for football from the very childhood.
His father started training him, when he barely was two. As a schoolboy, he already played for “Leyton Orient FC” representing the county of Essex. In 1991 he signed a contract with “Manchester United” as an intern. He started playing professionally for his favourite team in 1993. This period of his life lasted for ten years. David won his first cup in 1992, while playing for Manchester United. It was the Youth Federation Cup. In 1995, he played his debut game against the “Leeds”. The season of 1996-1997 became very significant for him. He replaced one of the main players and led his team to the gold medal championship of England and the quarterfinal of the Champions League.
Regardless his popularity, Beckham realized that football career is short-lived. His father helped him to convert his sports talent into money. When he was 20, he signed a contract with such giants of business as Pepsi and Adidas. He became the official face of these brands. Gradually, he became a real national hero. In 2000, he was appointed as a captain of the English national team. In 2002, he began playing for “Real” - a Madrid football team. His career in Spain quickly went uphill. In the seasons of 2006-2007 he became the champion of Spain, and he won the Super Cup in 2003. His assigned number “23” became a legend. The “Real” club has sold millions of T-shirts with this number.
In 2007, the footballer transferred to a small US club “Los Angeles Galaxy”. Starting from 2009, he was playing for Italian “Milan”. The debut with the Italian team was more than successful. He had two goals in four matches. By 2011-2012, several clubs were competing to get Beckham on their team, but he preferred to play his final season for the “LA Galaxy”. In December of 2012, he played his last match. Few people know that David suffers from a rare mental disorder. He constantly monitors that all things were placed in symmetrical order and in their places. Personal life of the footballer is connected with a well-known singer Victoria Adams, who was one of the “Spice Girls” stars. A couple has been married since 1999 and they have four children.

Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman (14.07.1918 - 30.07.2007) - Swedish director.

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a prominent Swedish film and theater director, as well as a (screen)-writer. He created a large amount of outstanding books. Even when he died the audience and fans remembered his works for many decades.
He was born in the Swedish city Uppsala on July 14th, 1918. His father was a priest which is why his early years were intimately connected with religion. However the strict cannons of the Lutheran Church didn’t kill the creativity and rich imagination which was in his nature.
Ingmar started dreaming of the screenwriter’s profession from the very childhood. He liked to create stories and storylines. Already as a teen he was fully involved in art and literature. After graduating from the secondary school, he entered the University of Stockholm. During his student years he was hesitating whether to acquire the profession of a writer or a screen-writer.
As the time passed, he managed to succeed in both desired industries. One of his first plays “Caspar’s Death” was written when he was only twenty-two. It was soon staged in one of the Swedish theaters, which immediately invited the young boy as a screen-writer. After that the “Swedish film industry” became interested in his work.
At first he mostly worked as an editor, correcting and supplementing other writers’ scripts. That’s when he earned considerable reputation among film-makers. The first independently written script of the author appeared in 1944. A few months later his work resulted into a successful film. After that he became increasingly demanded as a talented specialist in Sweden.
However, Ingmar wanted to try something new, for example, to serve as a film director and that’s what he did in 1946. His first film wasn’t as successful as the second one - “It Rains over Our Love”. The picture has become very popular among Swedish viewers and entered the national classics’ list. Some of his best works include “Summer With Monica” (1953), “The Seventh Seal” (1957), “The Silence” (1963) etc.
During his lifetime Bergman got three Oscars, four Venice Festival awards, BAFTA awards and a large number of other awards. His films and books are still popular not only in his native Sweden, but throughout the world. His last film “Ghost Sonata” was on air in 2007. The same year the writer died. Last years I. Bergman spent on a small island in the Baltic Sea, where he had a private house.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (December 16, 1770 — March 26, 1827) - German composer.

Ludwig van Beethoven, was a German composer and virtuoso pianist. He was an important figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most famous and influential musicians of all time.
Born in Bonn, Germany, he moved to Vienna, Austria, in his early twenties and settled there, studying with Joseph Haydn and quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist.
Beethoven's parents were Johann van Beethoven (1740 –1792) and Maria Magdalena Keverich (1744 –1787).
Beethoven's first music teacher was his father, who was a tenor in the service of the Electoral court at Bonn. He was reportedly a harsh instructor. Johann later engaged a friend, Tobias Pfeiffer, to preside over his son's musical training, and it is said Johann and his friend would at times come home late from a night of drinking to pull young Ludwig out of bed to practice until morning. Beethoven's talent was recognized at a very early age, and by 1778 he was studying the organ and viola in addition to the piano. His most important teacher in Bonn was Christian Gottlob Neefe, who was the Court's Organist. Neefe helped Beethoven publish his first composition: a set of keyboard variations.
In 1787, the young Beethoven traveled to Vienna for the first time, in hopes of studying with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is not clear whether he succeeded in meeting Mozart, or if he did whether Mozart was willing to accept him as a pupil. In any event, the declining health of Beethoven's mother, dying of tuberculosis, forced him to return home after only about two weeks in Vienna. Beethoven's mother died on July 17, 1787, when Beethoven was 16.
Due to his father's worsening alcohol addiction, Beethoven became responsible for raising his two younger brothers.
In 1792, Beethoven moved to Vienna, where he studied for a time with Joseph Haydn: his hopes of studying with Mozart had been shattered by Mozart's death the previous year. Beethoven received additional instruction from Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri. By 1793, Beethoven established a reputation in Vienna as a piano virtuoso. His first works appeared in 1795. He settled into the career pattern he would follow for the remainder of his life: rather than working for the church or a noble court (as most composers before him had done), he supported himself through a combination of annual stipends or single gifts from members of the aristocracy; income from concerts, and lessons; and proceeds from sales of his works.
Around 1796, Beethoven began to lose his hearing. He suffered a severe form of tinnitus, a "ringing" in his ears that made it hard for him to perceive and appreciate music. He lived for a time in the small Austrian town of Heiligenstadt, just outside Vienna. Here he wrote his Heiligenstadt Testament, which records his resolution to continue living for and through his art. Over time, his hearing loss became profound: there is a well-attested story that, at the end of the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, he had to be turned around to see the tumultuous applause of the audience; hearing nothing, he began to weep. Beethoven's hearing loss did not prevent his composing music, but it made concerts—lucrative sources of income—increasingly difficult.
After Beethoven lost custody of his nephew, he went into a decline that led to his death on March 26, 1827 during a thunderstorm.

Alexandr Blok

Alexandr Blok (28 November 1880 — 7 August 1921) - Russian poet.

Blok born 28 November 1880. His father, A.L. Blok, was a lawyer and professor at Warsaw University. His mother, A.A. Beketova, was a writer. Soon after his birth, his parents separated and the young Blok spent much time with his grandfather, A.N. Beketov, a botantist at St. Petersburg University. At age five, the young Blok began writing verses.
In 1889, Blok's mother remarried, and he went to live with her and her new husband. He spent summers in the Beketov summer house in Shakhmatovo, halfway between Petersburg and Moscow. At age 14, he was the editor of The Messenger, a family literary journal produced in only one copy.
In 1898, Blok entered the law faculty of Petersburg University, but in 1901 he transferred to the historical-philological faculty, from which he graduated in 1906.
Beginning in approximately 1898, Blok began to fall under the influence of the poetry and mysticism of Vladimir Solovyov. It was also during this time that he began wooing Lyubov Mendeleeva, his future wife. In 1903 Blok and Lyubov were married.
1903 was also the year that his first verses were published in the journal Novii Put'. Blok's first book of verse, Verses on a Beautiful Lady, appeared in 1904.
Following the revolutionary events of 1905 and Blok's graduation from university in 1906, his outlook became bleaker, he took up drinking. Blok's next volumes of verse appeared in 1907.
In 1909, Blok and Lyubov took a trip to Italy, seeking refuge from the unhappiness of Russia. The journey resulted in his cycle of "Italian Verses" and the collection of essays "Lightning of Art". They returned to Russia, but the news was not good. Blok's mother was having epileptic seizures, and his father died in Warsaw.
Blok traveled to Warsaw for the funeral of the father he barely knew. This experience was the basis for his epic verse "Retribution", a story of three generations.
After his return to Warsaw, Blok and Lyubov took a trip across Europe. Blok visited the Louvre but didn't get to see the Mona Lisa because it had been stolen.
By 1910, back in Russia, Blok--now completely separated from the Symbolists. He was fascinated with wrestling and gymnastics.
In 1911 - 1912, Blok's health was wobbly. He suffered from scurvy and neurasthenia. In 1913, Blok completed the play "Rose and Cross", based on an old French legend.
When World War I began, Lyubov signed up as a nurse and was sent off to the front. During this period, Blok wrote little, but read the newspapers avidly. He sincerely desired the fall of tsarism, but did nothing to help bring this about. In 1916 he was drafted into the army. He got a cushy appointment as a record-keeper in an engineering units 10 kilometers from the front. Life was uneventful.
Blok joyously welcomed the February Revolution. In May 1917 he was reassigned to edit testimony given by tsarist ministers before an investigative commission of the Provisional Revolutionary Government. This provided much material for his book "The Last Days of the Old Regime" (1919).
Perhaps his most famous work, Dvenatsat ("The Twelve") appeared in 1918. It was greeted as the first serious literary treatment of the October Revolution.
In 1919 he became director of the Bolshoi Drama Theatre, where the repertoire was mainly classical--Shakespeare, Moliere, Schiller.
In 1920, Blok was elected chairman of the Petrograd division of the All-Russian Union of Poets. He was also editor of the literary journal Zapiski Mechtatelei ("Dreamers' Notes").
His illness, which had been brewing since 1918, became acute in April 1921. Pain was excrutiating. He couldn't walk.
He died on 7 August 1921 and was buried at Smolensky cemetery.

Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Bronte (21.04.1816 - 31.03.1855) - English novelist and poet.

Charlotte Bronte was a famous English novelist, poet and educator. She was born in a rather religious family on April 21st, 1816. Her father was a priest, who was later appointed as a vicar. Her mother died when she was still a child. Thus, Patrick Bronte was left alone to raise 6 children. As his wife died, he sent the girls to study at Cowan Bridge.
This place was later mentioned by Charlotte in her outstanding novel about Jane Eyre. The overall atmosphere at school was terrible, so the two of Bronte sisters fell seriously ill there. Soon Charlotte lost two more close relatives. Now she was left with two other sisters - Emily and Anne.
In fact, all three of them later became renowned writers. However the most glorious one was Charlotte. She began writing at a rather early age, to be precise, when she was only ten. All her early works were filled with inexistent Byronic colonies found in Africa. Poetry was definitely her cup of tea.
After graduating from high school Charlotte stayed and worked there as an educator, i.e. a teacher of English. Her aunt supported the sisters with some money, which they spent on their French education. In 1838 they moved to Brussels to study French and at the same time they had the opportunity to teach there.
At some point Charlotte had to return, as her aunt had died. Later her teaching experience was fully retold in one of her novels. After returning she lived in the family estate taking care of her elderly father. At the same time she ran a boarding house and worked on the new novels. In 1846 her sisters sold their works “Agnes Grey” and “Wuthering Heights” to English publishers, but Charlotte’s novel was turned down.
For that reason she started promoting her “Jane Eyre” novel which gained an immediate fame and success. However, the writer’s happiness didn’t last. Soon, her brother died of tuberculosis. Two of her favourite sisters followed him. Basically, she was left alone. Under the influence of heavy stress she agreed to marry the local priest A. B. Nicholls. It happened in 1854. Shortly after the wedding she fell ill. At first doctors diagnosed her with pregnancy.
In fact, she was ill and the state of her health was quickly deteriorating. At that time she was working on her new novel “Emma” which stayed unfinished. Charlotte died in 1855 when she was only thirty-eight. Two years later, on Patrick Bronte’s request E. Gaskell, who was Charlotte’s recent friend, wrote her full biography, based on the letters to Ellen Nassi.

Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhail Bulgakov (15.05.1891 - 10.03.1940) - Russian writer.

Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev in 1891. His father was a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy.
Friendship, respect, and mutual love reigned in Bulgakov's large family and happy home. From childhood Bulgakov was drawn to theater. At home, he wrote comedies, which his brothers and sisters acted out; in high school, theater was his favorite subject. In 1909, he enrolled in Medical School of Kiev University. He graduated in 1916. In 1913, he moved with his first wife to the village of Viazma where he was assigned to obligatory medical service as part of his education. [Bulgakov had married three times: with Tatiana Nikolaevna Lappa (1913), Liubov Evgenevna Belozerskaia (1924) and Elena Sergeevna (1932).]
In 1918 Bulgakov returned to Kiev and began to practice medicine.
Kiev was at that time the focal point of an intense struggle between German troops, the Ukrainian Nationalist Army, Red troops, and the Russian Volunteer Army. Bulgakov enlisted as a field doctor in a Volunteer Army regiment and went to the Caucasus. Toward the end of 1919, he resigned from military service and started to work as a journalist and playwright. After a few of his early plays were staged in local theaters, Bulgakov moved to Moscow, where he stayed for the rest of his life and where literature and theater were his only concerns.
The first few years in post-revolutionary Moscow were a continuous struggle for survival. Bulgakov wrote comic sketches for various newspapers. In many of these works--some autobiographical--Bulgakov protested the cruelty, violence, and murders he witnessed during the Civil War. From 1924 to 1926 wrote "The Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog," two short novels that contain bitter satire and elements of science fiction. Both are concerned with the fate of a scientist and the misuse of his discovery. The most significant features of Bulgakov's satire, such as a skillful blending of fantastic and realistic elements, grotesque situations, and a concern with important ethical issues, had already taken shape; these features were developed further in Bulgakov's last novel The Master and Margarita.
In 1925, Bulgakov began his eleven-year association with the Moscow Art Theater. His play The Day of the Turbins premiered on October 5, 1926 and continued the theme of the earlier The White Guard -- dealing with the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and civil war. Other plays treated the topic of people caught up in momentous, historical upheavals. Bulgakov's satirical comedies were staged with success but provoked hostile attacks in the Soviet press. In the spring of 1929 all of Bulgakov's plays were banned, leaving him without a source of income. He sent a letter to the Soviet government in March of 1930 requesting permission to resume his publications. He received a personal telephone call from Stalin and permission to work at the Art Theater, where he adapted Gogol's Dead Souls for stage.
The fate of a writer fighting for his spiritual and artistic independence and his right to create became the subject of several of Bulgakov's works in the 1930s. During the late 1930s he was librettist and consultant at Bolshoi Theatre. However, Stalin's favor protected Bulgakov only from arrests and executions, but his writings remained unpublished. His novels and dramas were subsequently banned and, for the second time, Bulgakov's career as playwright was ruined. After his last play Batum was banned even before rehearsals, Bulgakov requested permission to leave the country. Years of such requests resulted in failure. In poor health, Bulgakov devoted his last years to what he called his "sunset" novel--The Master and Margarita.
While working on Master and Margarita in 1937-1939, Bulgakov was sometimes optimistic and believed in the possibility of the publication, but at other times he lost his optimism and did not dream of ever seeing it in print.
In the sixties, after Stalin's death, many of the literary works previously banned in the USSR were published. Master and Margarita was first published in censored form in 1967 in number 11 of Moscow magazine. The novel's readers experienced a sharp feeling of loss, which stemed from the conclusion of the novel: "You will be reading these pages when I will no longer be among you; you will look for me, but you will not find me". Master and Margarita was again republished in a fuller form in 1973; yet it took until 1989 before Bulgakov's work could be published in Russia in its original form.
Bulgakov has an astonishing talent for transforming harsh reality into an almost jovial anecdote. His works are full of genuine humor and wit along with satire and bitter irony. From humorous sketches Bulgakov progressed through Gogolian grotesque and surrealistic stories to end with the profoundly philosophical novel, Master and Margarita.
Mikhail Bulgakov died in Moscow on March 10, 1940.

Ivan Bunin

Ivan Bunin (22.10.1870 - 08.11.1953) - Russian writer.

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, born Oct. 10 [Oct. 22, New Style], 1870, Voronezh, Russia, died Nov. 8, 1953, Paris, France.
Poet and novelist, the first Russian to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1933) and one of the best of Russian stylists.
While working as a journalist and clerk Bunin wrote and translated poetry; his first volume of verse was published in 1891. For his translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Hiawatha he was awarded a Pushkin prize in 1903 by the Russian Academy, which later elected him an honorary fellow (1909). He also translated Lord Byron's Manfred and Cain. Bunin, whose poetry has a Parnassian ring, had no use for modern avant-garde trends.
Bunin made his name as a short-story writer with such masterpieces as “Gospodin iz San-Frantsisko,” the title piece in one of his collections (1916; The Gentleman from San Francisco). His last book of stories, Tyomnyye allei (Dark Avenues), was published in 1943.
Bunin's longer works include Derevnya (1910; The Village), Mitina lyubov (1925; Mitya's Love), Zhizn Arsenyeva (“The Life of Arsenev”), a fictional autobiography (1930; The Well of Days) and its sequel, Lika (1939), and two volumes of memoirs, Okayannyye dni (1935; “The Cursed Days”) and Vospominaniya (1950; Memories and Portraits).
He also wrote books on Leo Tolstoy (Osvobozhdeniye Tolstogo, 1937; “Tolstoy's Liberation”) and Anton Chekhov, both of whom he knew personally. The latter book, O Chekhove (“On Chekhov”), remained unfinished and was published posthumously (1955).
Bunin's life and work are examined in Julian W. Connolly, Ivan Bunin (1982); Thomas Gaiton Marullo (ed.), Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem, 1885–1920 (1993), and Ivan Bunin: From the Other Shore, 1920–1933 (1995), comprising Bunin's letters, diaries and fiction, as well as writings of his wife; and James B. Woodward, Ivan Bunin: A Study of His Fiction (1980).

George W. Bush

George W. Bush (06.07.1946) - American president.

George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States. He was sworn into office on January 20, 2001, re-elected on November 2, 2004, and sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005. Prior to his Presidency, President Bush served for 6 years as the 46th Governor of the State of Texas, where he earned a reputation for bipartisanship and as a compassionate conservative who shaped public policy based on the principles of limited government, personal responsibility, strong families, and local control.
President Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University in 1968, and then served as an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. President Bush received a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975. Following graduation, he moved back to Midland and began a career in the energy business. After working on his father's successful 1988 Presidential campaign, President Bush assembled the group of partners who purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989. On November 8, 1994, President Bush was elected Governor of Texas. He became the first Governor in Texas history to be elected to consecutive 4-year terms when he was re-elected on November 3, 1998.
Since becoming President of the United States in 2001, President Bush has worked with the Congress to create an ownership society and build a future of security, prosperity, and opportunity for all Americans. He signed into law tax relief that helps workers keep more of their hard-earned money, as well as the most comprehensive education reforms in a generation, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This legislation is ushering in a new era of accountability, flexibility, local control, and more choices for parents, affirming our Nation's fundamental belief in the promise of every child. President Bush has also worked to improve healthcare and modernize Medicare, providing the first-ever prescription drug benefit for seniors; increase homeownership, especially among minorities; conserve our environment; and increase military strength, pay, and benefits. Because President Bush believes the strength of America lies in the hearts and souls of our citizens, he has supported programs that encourage individuals to help their neighbors in need.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked our Nation. Since then, President Bush has taken unprecedented steps to protect our homeland and create a world free from terror. He is grateful for the service and sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform and their families. The President is confident that by helping build free and prosperous societies, our Nation and our friends and allies will succeed in making America more secure and the world more peaceful.
President Bush is married to Laura Welch Bush, a former teacher and librarian, and they have twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna.

Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner (22.05.1813 - 13.02.1883) - German composer and conductor.

Richard Wagner image picture Ричард Вагнер Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, music theorist, and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas" as they were later called). Unlike most other great opera composers, Wagner always wrote the scenario and libretto for his works himself.
Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their contrapuntal texture, rich chromaticism, harmonies and orchestration, and elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with specific characters, locales, or plot elements. Wagner pioneered advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, which greatly influenced the development of European classical music.
He transformed musical thought through his idea of Gesamtkunstwerk ("total artwork"), the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, epitomized by his monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876). Wagner even went so far as to build his own opera house to try to stage these works as he had imagined them.
Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig on 22 May 1813, the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service. Wagner's father died of typhus six months after Richard's birth, following which Wagner's mother, Johanna Rosine Wagner, began living with the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer, who had been a friend of Richard's father. In August 1814 Johanna Rosine married Geyer, and moved with her family to his residence in Dresden. For the first 14 years of his life, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. Wagner may later have suspected that Geyer was in fact his biological father, and furthermore speculated incorrectly that Geyer was Jewish.
Geyer's love of the theatre was shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in performances. In his autobiography Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel. The boy Wagner was also hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Weber's Der Freischutz. In late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He could not manage a proper scale but preferred playing theater overtures by ear. Geyer died in 1821, when Richard was eight. Consequently, Wagner was sent to the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden, paid for by Geyer's brother. The young Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright, his first creative effort (listed as 'WWV 1') being a tragedy, Leubald begun at school in 1826, which was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe. Wagner determined to set it to music; he persuaded his family to allow him music lessons.
By 1827, the family had moved back to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in composition were taken in 1828-31 with Christian Gottlieb Muller. In January of 1828 he first heard Beethoven's 7th Symphony and then, in March, Beethoven's 9th Symphony performed in the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Beethoven became his inspiration, and Wagner wrote a piano transcription of the 9th Symphony, piano sonatas and orchestral overtures.
In 1829 he saw the dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient on stage, and she became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In his autobiography, Wagner wrote, "If I look back on my life as a whole, I can find no event that produced so profound an impression upon me.". Wagner claimed to have seen Schroder-Devrient in the title role of Fidelio; however, it seems more likely that he saw her performance as Romeo in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi. He enrolled at the University of Leipzig in 1831. He also took composition lessons with the cantor of Saint Thomas church, Christian Theodor Weinlig. Weinlig was so impressed with Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons, and arranged for one of Wagner's piano works to be published. A year later, Wagner composed his Symphony in C major, a Beethovenesque work which gave him his first opportunity as a conductor in 1832. He then began to work on an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which was never completed.
In 1833, Wagner's older brother Karl Albert managed to obtain Richard a position as chorusmaster in Wurzburg. In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies). This opera, which clearly imitated the style of Carl Maria von Weber, would go unproduced until half a century later, when it was premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883.
Meanwhile, Wagner held brief appointments as musical director at opera houses in Magdeburg and Konigsberg, during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), based on William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. This second opera was staged at Magdeburg in 1836, but closed before the second performance, leaving the composer (not for the last time) in serious financial difficulties.
On 24 November 1836, Wagner married actress Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer. They moved to the city of Riga, then in the Russian Empire, where Wagner became music director of the local opera. A few weeks afterward, Minna ran off with an army officer who then abandoned her, penniless. Wagner took Minna back; however, this was but the first debacle of a troubled marriage that would end in misery three decades later.
By 1839, the couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga to escape from creditors (debt would plague Wagner for most of his life). During their flight, they and their Newfoundland dog, Robber, took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner claimed to draw the inspiration for Der Fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman - it was actually based on a sketch by Heinrich Heine). The Wagners spent 1840 and 1841 in Paris, where Richard made a scant living writing articles and arranging operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the Schlesinger publishing house. He also completed Rienzi and Der Fliegende Hollander during this time.
Wagner completed writing his third opera, Rienzi, in 1840. Largely through the agency of Meyerbeer, it was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre (Hofoper) in the German state of Saxony. Thus in 1842, the couple moved to Dresden, where Rienzi was staged to considerable acclaim. Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged Der fliegende Hollander and Tannhauser, the first two of his three middle-period operas.
The Wagners' stay at Dresden was brought to an end by Richard's involvement in leftist politics. A nationalist movement was gaining force in the independent German States, calling for constitutional freedoms and the unification of the weak princely states into a single nation. Richard Wagner played an enthusiastic role in this movement, receiving guests at his house that included his colleague August Rockel, who was editing the radical left-wing paper Volksblatter, and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.
Widespread discontent against the Saxon government came to a head in April 1849, when King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony dissolved Parliament and rejected a new constitution pressed upon him by the people. The May Uprising broke out, in which Wagner played a minor supporting role. The incipient revolution was quickly crushed by an allied force of Saxon and Prussian troops, and warrants were issued for the arrest of the revolutionaries. Wagner had to flee, first to Paris and then to Zurich. Rockel and Bakunin failed to escape and endured long terms of imprisonment.
Wagner spent the next twelve years in exile. He had completed Lohengrin before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend Franz Liszt to have it staged in his absence. Liszt, who proved to be a friend in need, eventually conducted the premiere in Weimar in August 1850.
Nevertheless, Wagner found himself in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any income to speak of. Before leaving Dresden, he had drafted a scenario that would eventually become his mammoth cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. He wrote the libretto for a single opera, Siegfried's Tod (Siegfried's Death) in 1848. After arriving in Zurich he expanded the story to include an opera about the young Siegfried. He completed the cycle by writing Die Walkure and Das Rheingold and revising the later operas to agree with his new concept. His wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after Rienzi, was falling into a deepening depression. Finally, he fell victim to erysipelas, which made it difficult for him to continue writing.
Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zurich was a set of notable essays: The Art-Work of the Future (1849), in which he described a vision of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total artwork", in which the various arts such as music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts, and stagecraft were unified; Judaism in Music (1850), a tract directed against Jewish composers; and Opera and Drama (1851), which described ideas in aesthetics that he was putting to use on the Ring operas.
By 1852 Wagner had completed the libretto of the four Ring operas, and he began composing Das Rheingold in November 1853, following it immediately with Die Walkure in 1854. He then began work on the third opera, Siegfried in 1856, but finished only the first two acts before deciding to put the work aside to concentrate on a new idea: Tristan und Isolde.
Wagner had two independent sources of inspiration for Tristan und Isolde. The first came to him in 1854, when his poet friend Georg Herwegh introduced him to the works of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Wagner would later call this the most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, a deeply pessimistic view of the human condition. He would remain an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life, even after his fortunes improved.
One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role amongst the arts, since it was the only one unconcerned with the material world. Wagner quickly embraced this claim, which must have resonated strongly despite its direct contradiction with his own arguments, in "Opera and Drama", that music in opera had to be subservient to the cause of drama. Wagner scholars have since argued that this Schopenhauerian influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the Ring cycle, which he had yet to compose. Many aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine undoubtedly found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti. For example, the self-renouncing cobbler-poet Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger, generally considered Wagner's most sympathetic character, is a quintessentially Schopenhauerian creation (despite being based on a real person).
Wagner's second source of inspiration was the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of the silk merchant Otto von Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks in Zurich in 1852. Otto, a fan of Wagner's music, placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal. By 1857, Wagner had become infatuated with Mathilde.

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh (30.04.1853 - 29.07.1890) - Dutch painter

Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter. His paintings are now highly valued in the world of art. He was born in the Southern Netherlands on March 30, 1853. His father was a pastor. Vincent wasn’t the only child in the family; he had two brothers and three sisters. In 1869 not even finishing the secondary school he left for Hague to work there at one large art company. In painter’s family all men somehow dealt either with religion or with art.
By the age of twenty Vincent decided to change his work area and to follow his father’s steps. He soon found pastor’s assisting job in the suburbs of London and moved there. His first sermon was held on October 29, 1876. A year later he moved back to the Netherlands to study theology at the University of Amsterdam. Time spent in London had considerably changed the artist’s life and views. Firstly, he had a good salary, so he could afford to visit various art galleries and museums. Secondly, he became a successful trader and could have an excellent career.
However, everything changed when he fell in love with his flat owner’s daughter, who had already been engaged. Facing this fact, he became indifferent to his work and to other joyful things in life. He lost his job and returned to the Netherlands. The only solace he found was religion. Having moved to Amsterdam, he began studying priesthood, but soon dropped the faculty. When he was about thirty-three Vincent moved to Paris to stay with his brother Theo.
There he got a chance to take painting lessons from F. Cormon and to meet such artists as Gauguin, Pissarro and others. He soon forgot all the misfortunes and became a recognizable and respectful artist. He largely developed the styles of impressionism and post-impressionism. At the same time he still worked as a preacher in one evangelical church. By the age of twenty-seven he knew exactly that he would dedicate his life to art. Although he took some drawing lessons, he was considered a self-taught painter, as he read lots of tutorials and had his own style.
Unfortunately, the painter’s life was soon again filled with love sufferings. This time it was his widowed cousin Kee Vos. She was also the reason why he quarreled with his father and moved to Hague. He met a woman of easy virtue there. Wishing to save her from her numerous sins, Vincent was even willing to marry her, but again his family interfered and thoughts of marriage were simply shattered. Returning to his home place he improved his drawing skills.
Soon he returned to Paris to his brother Theo, who always helped and supported him in every possible way. In fact, France for van Gogh was almost like the motherland. He spent all the rest of his life there, feeling like home. He was a person with difficult and explosive character. Some people even called him a crazy lunatic. Nevertheless he had his own friends who kept him a company. In 1888 he moved to Arles where he planned to create a settlement for artists. When he shared his idea with his friend Gauguin, they became enemies.
In the burst of anger van Gogh cut off his own left ear. After this case he was placed for two weeks in psychiatric hospital. Even after returning home he suffered from occasional hallucinations and had to re-start the treatment. In 1890 he finally left the hospital and went to Theo’s home, whose wife had just given birth to the son they named Vincent after his uncle. This peaceful happiness didn’t last. In July1890 van Gogh shot himself. The painter died in his brother’s arms, who loved him very much. Six months later his brother Theo also died and was buried next to Vincent.

Jean-Claude Van Damme

Jean-Claude Van Damme (born 18.10.1960) - American actor.

From his arrival in the USA in 1981 at age 21, Jean-Claude Van Damme harbored only one dream, to become a movie star. Handsome and muscular, he studied martial arts from the time he was 11 and eventually won the European Professional Karate Association's middleweight championship while in his late teens. The Belgian, who was born Jean-Claude Van Varenberg, reportedly operated the California Gym in his native land before traveling to Hong Kong (where he briefly worked as a model). In 1981, he settled in Hollywood with the expressed goal of becoming a movie star.
Adopting various stage names like Frank Cujo and Jean-Claude Vandam, he made ends meet in a variety of odd jobs. Cast in his first feature, the 1983 French film "Rue Barbere", he clashed with the director and either quit or was fired (depending on whose version one believes). After finally getting his first acting role, as a gay hitchhiker in the short "Monaco Forever" (1984), Van Damme finally landed a major role as the Russian opponent to an American karate student in "No Retreat No Surrender" (1986). After approaching producer Menahem Golan outside a Beverly Hills restaurant, Van Damme demonstrated his unique contribution to the martial arts genre: executing a karate kick to his opponent's head during an impressive 360-degree leap. Suitably impressed, the producer hired him for "Bloodsport" (1988), which has acquired status as a minor cult classic. The low-budget film earned an impressive $35 million box office, helping Van Damme to partially achieve his goal to become a movie star.
Unlike the other contemporary popular action heroes, Van Damme projected a softer character. He was not as invincible as Schwarzenegger nor as unrefined as Stallone. Also, his impressive physicality (in nearly every Van Damme film, he executes a masterful split) set him apart. Yet, he was not as mainstream as the others. There is a finite fan base for a Van Damme film and while some of his movies have been money-makers, none have achieved blockbuster status in the USA. On the other hand, worldwide his appeal is unchallenged.
Van Damme's vehicles in the late 1980s and early 90s were fairly formulaic, requiring him to speak little, display as much of his muscular physique as possible and kick butt. At the same time, the actor was shouldering more and more responsibilities, moving into second unit work and providing storylines ("Kickboxer" 1988) and later producing ("Double Impact" 1991) and even directing ("The Quest" 1996). Although savvy enough to ally himself with Hong Kong masters, like John Woo ("Hard Target" 1993), Ringo Lam ("Maximum Risk" 1996) and Tsui Hark ("Double Team" 1997 and "Knock Off" 1998), the results have been minor entries in the directors' filmographies.
A scrappy self-promoter, Van Damme has often given startlingly candid interviews, often timed to the release of new films. His personal life, including his four marriages and several lawsuits, has elements of a soap opera played on a very public stage. Since the mid-90s, Van Damme has made passing references to his struggles with substance abuse, claiming to have spent 10-years addicted to sleeping pills and several more abusing cocaine. Despite seeming on the verge of becoming a breakthrough success on several occasions, notably with 1992's "Universal Soldier" and the more dramatic "Nowhere to Run" (1993), he remains mired in the action genre. Unlike Stallone or Schwarzenegger, Van Damme has yet to find that crossover role. Reportedly, he has kicked his drug problems and is searching for that film that will earn the respect of moviegoers and the Hollywood establishment.

George Washington

George Washington (22.02.1732 (O.S. 11.02.1731) - 14.12.1799) - 1st President of the United States.

He was born on Feb. 22, 1732 (Feb. 11, 1731, O.S.), the first son of Augustine Washington and his second wife, Mary Ball Washington, on the family estate (later known as Wakefield) in Westmoreland co., Va. Of a wealthy family, Washington embarked upon a career as a surveyor and in 1748 was invited to go with the party that was to survey Baron Fairfax's lands W of the Blue Ridge. In 1749 he was appointed to his first public office, surveyor of newly created Culpeper co., and through his half-brother Lawrence Washington he became interested in the Ohio Company, which had as its object the exploitation of Western lands. After Lawrence's death (1752), George inherited part of his estate and took over some of Lawrence's duties as adjutant of the colony. As district adjutant, which made (Dec., 1752) him Major Washington at the age of 20, he was charged with training the militia in the quarter assigned him.

The French and Indian War

Washington first gained public notice late in 1753 when he volunteered to carry a message from Gov. Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia to the French moving into the Ohio country, warning them to quit the territory, which was claimed by the British. In delivering the message Washington learned that the French were planning a further advance. He hastened back to Virginia, where he was commissioned lieutenant colonel by Dinwiddie and sent with about 400 men to reinforce the post that Dinwiddie had ordered built at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers.
The French, however, captured the post before he could reach it, and on hearing that they were approaching in force, Washington retired to the Great Meadows to build (July) an entrenched camp (Fort Necessity). Late in May he had won his first military victory (and his colonelcy) when he surprised (through the intelligence of his Native American allies) a small body of French troops. The French soon avenged this defeat, overwhelming him with a superior force at Fort Necessity on July 3, 1754. He surrendered on easy terms on July 4 and returned to Virginia with the survivors of his command. These battles marked the beginning of the last of the French and Indian Wars in America, in which Washington continued to figure.
As an aide to Edward Braddock he acquitted himself with honor in that general's disastrous expedition against Fort Duquesne in 1755. After the debacle he was appointed commander in chief of the Virginia militia to defend the frontier, and in 1758 he commanded one of the three brigades in the expedition headed by Gen. John Forbes that took an abandoned Fort Duquesne. With this episode his pre-Revolutionary military career ended.

The American Revolution

In 1759, Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis, a rich young widow, and settled on his estate at Mt. Vernon. He was a member (1759–74) of the house of burgesses, became a leader in Virginian opposition to the British colonial policy, and served (1774–75) as a delegate to the Continental Congress. After the American Revolution broke out at Concord and Lexington, the Congress organized for defense, and, largely through the efforts of John Adams, Washington was named (June 15, 1775) commander in chief of the Continental forces.
He took command (July 3, 1775) at Cambridge, Mass., and found not an army but a force of unorganized, poorly disciplined, short-term enlisted militia, officered by men who were often insubordinate. He was faced with the problem of holding the British at Boston with a force that had to be trained in the field, and he was constantly hampered by congressional interference. Washington momentarily overcame these handicaps with the brilliant strategic move of occupying Dorchester Heights, forcing the British to evacuate Boston on Mar. 17, 1776.
Against his wishes the Continental Congress compelled him to attempt to defend New York City with a poorly equipped and untrained army against a large British land and sea force commanded by Sir William Howe. He was not yet experienced enough to conduct a large-scale action, and he committed a military blunder by sending part of his force to Brooklyn, where it was defeated (see Long Island, battle of) and surrounded. With the British fleet ready to close the only escape route, Washington saved his army with a masterly amphibious retreat across the East River back to Manhattan. Seeing that his position was completely untenable, he began a retreat northward into Westchester co., which was marked by delaying actions at Harlem Heights and White Plains and by the treacherous insubordination of Charles Lee. The retreat continued across the Hudson River through New Jersey into Pennsylvania, as Washington developed military skill through trial and error.
With colonial morale at its lowest ebb, he invaded New Jersey. On Christmas night, 1776, he crossed the Delaware, surrounded and defeated the British at Trenton, and pushed on to Princeton (Jan. 3, 1777), where he defeated a second British force. In 1777 he attempted to defend Philadelphia but was defeated at the battle of Brandywine (Sept. 11). His carefully planned counterattack at Germantown (Oct. 4, 1777) went awry, and with this second successive defeat certain discontented army officers and members of Congress tried to have Washington removed from command. Horatio Gates was advanced as a likely candidate to succeed him, but Washington's prompt action frustrated the so-called Conway Cabal.
After Germantown, Washington went into winter quarters at Valley Forge. Seldom in military history has any general faced such want and misery as Washington did in the winter of 1777–78. He proved equal to every problem, and in the spring he emerged with increased powers from Congress and a well-trained striking force, personally devoted to him. The attack (June 28, 1778) on the British retreating from Philadelphia to New York was vitiated by the actions of Charles Lee, but Washington's arrival on the field prevented a general American rout (see Monmouth, battle of). The fortunes of war soon shifted in favor of the colonial cause with the arrival (1780) of French military and naval forces, and victory finally came when General Cornwallis surrendered to Washington on Oct. 19, 1781. Washington made the American Revolution successful not only by his personal military triumphs but also by his skill in directing other operations.

Presidency

At the war's end he was the most important man in the country. He retired from the army (at Annapolis, Md., Dec. 23, 1783), returned to Mt. Vernon, and in 1784 journeyed to the West to inspect his lands there. Dissatisfied with the weakness of the government (see Confederation, Articles of), he soon joined the movement intent on reorganizing it. In 1785 commissioners from Virginia and Maryland met at Mt. Vernon to settle a dispute concerning navigation on the Potomac. This meeting led to the Annapolis Convention (1786) and ultimately to the Constitutional Convention (1787). Washington presided over this last convention, and his influence in securing the adoption of the Constitution of the United States is incalculable.
After a new government was organized, Washington was unanimously chosen the first President and took office (Apr. 30, 1789) in New York City. He was anxious to establish the new national executive above partisanship, and he chose men from all factions for the administrative departments. Thomas Jefferson became Secretary of State, and Alexander Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury. His efforts to remain aloof from partisan struggles were not successful. He approved of Hamilton's nationalistic financial measures, and although he was by no means a tool in the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury, he consistently supported Hamilton's policies. In the Anglo-French war (1793) he decided against Jefferson, who favored fulfilling the 1778 military alliance with France, and he took measures against Edmond Charles Edouard Genet. Jefferson left the cabinet, and despite Washington's efforts to preserve a political truce the Republican party (later the Democratic party) and the Federalist party emerged.
Washington was unanimously reelected (1793), but his second administration was Federalist and was bitterly criticized by Jeffersonians, especially for Jay's Treaty with England. Washington was denounced by some as an aristocrat and an enemy of true democratic ideals. The Whiskey Rebellion and trouble with the Native Americans, British, and Spanish in the West offered serious problems. The crushing of the rebellion, the defeat of the Native Americans by Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timbers, and the treaty Thomas Pinckney negotiated with Spain settled some of these troubles. Foreign affairs remained gloomy, however, and Washington, weary with political life, refused to run for a third term. Washington's Farewell Address (Sept. 17, 1796), a monument of American oratory, contained the famous (and much misquoted) passage warning the United States against “permanent alliances” with foreign powers. Washington returned to Mt. Vernon, but when war with France seemed imminent (1798) he was offered command of the army. War, however, was averted. He died on Dec. 14, 1799, and was buried on his estate.
There are many portraits and statues of Washington, among them the familiar, idealized portraits by Gilbert Stuart; the statue by Jean Antoine Houdon, who also executed the famous portrait bust from a life mask; and paintings by Charles Willson Peale, John Trumbull, and John Singleton Copley. His figure also has bulked large in drama, poetry, fiction, and essays in American literature. The national capital is named for him; one state, several colleges and universities, and scores of counties, towns, and villages of the United States bear his name. Wakefield and Mt. Vernon are national shrines.

Jules Verne

Jules Verne (08.02.1828 - 24.03.1905) - French author.

French author whose writings laid much of the foundation of modern science fiction.
In Paris Verne studied law but afterward chose to follow his interest in literature. In 1850 his play, "The Broken Straws", was successfully produced at Alexandre Dumas's Theatre Historique. He served as secretary at the Theatre Lyrique (1852-54) and later turned stockbroker but continued writing comedies, librettos, and stories.
In 1863 he published in Jules Hetzel's Magasin the first of his Voyages extraordinaires - Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1869. The great success of the tale encouraged him to produce others in the same vein of romantic adventure, with increasingly deft depictions of fantastic but nonetheless carefully conceived imaginary scientific wonders. The Voyages continued with A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 1874, From the Earth to the Moon, 1873, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, 1873, and The Mysterious Island, 1875, in which he foresaw a number of scientific devices and developments, including the submarine, the aqualung, television, and space travel.
Verne's novels were enormously popular throughout the world; one in particular, the grippingly realistic Around the World in Eighty Days, 1873, generated great excitement during its serial publication in Le Temps and remained one of his most popular works. From 1872 he lived in Amiens. In 1892 he was made an officer of the Lйgion d'Honneur.
A number of successful motion pictures have been made from Verne novels, starting in 1916 with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (remade in 1954 by Walt Disney), The Mysterious Island (1929 and 1961), From the Earth to the Moon (1958), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), and, perhaps the most popular, Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).
In 1905, Verne died at his home.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei (15.02.1564 - 08.01.1642) - Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer.

Galileo Galilei was born on 15 February 1564 in Pisa, Italy. There were six children in a family of Vincenzo Galilei and Giulia Ammannati and he was the eldest. Only four children of their family survived. His father was a noted lutenist and his work was associated with music. It is known that the youngest brother of Galileo, Michelangelo, became a lutenist too. Michelangelo was enjoined by financial worries and could not help his father with dowry for their brothers-in-law, who subsequently tried to get payment due legally. Galileo sometimes lent the money to Michelangelo to help him support his musical efforts. These circumstances enhanced Galileo’s aspiration to develop inventions and earn extra income.
Galileo’s name was borrowed from his ancestor Galileo Bonaiuti who was a doctor, politician and teacher. He was born in 1370 and died in 1450. The surname of the family changed from Bonaiuti to Galilei in those years. Galileo Bonaiuti was buried in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence and two centuries later his noted offspring was buried in the same place.
At the age of eight Galileo’s family moved to Florence but he stayed with Jacopo Borghini for 2 years. Galileo was educated in the Camaldolese Monastery at Vallombrosa which was located near Florence.
Galileo Galilei was in a relationship with Marina Gamba and they had 3 children born out of wedlock. His eldest daughter, Virginia, was born in 1600 and the second daughter, Livia, was born in 1601. Galileo’s third child, Vincenzo, was born in 1606. Because of illegitimate birth his daughters chose the religious life. Both Livia and Virginia spent their whole life remaining at the convent of San Matteo in Arcetri. Livia’s name was changed to Sister Arcangela. Virginia changed her name to Maria Celeste. She died in 1634 and was buried in the same church with Galileo. Vincenzo became the legatee of Galileo and married.
At the age of 17 Galileo Galilei entered the University of Pisa where he studied medicine. He also was interested in mathematics, astronomy and mechanics. In 1589 he became a professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa. From 1592 to 1610 he began to teach mathematics, astronomy and mechanics at the University of Padua.
It is also known that Galileo worked on improvement of design of the telescope and invented different implements like an improved compass. He considered that theory of heliocentrism was right and most of astronomers did not agree with his opinion. As the saying goes Galileo Galilei said the famous phrase “And yet it moves” when he recanted his belief that the Earth moves around the Sun. He wrote a lot of scientific books including Two New Sciences which became his final book.
Galileo Galilei died at the age of 77 in 1642. In 1737 he was reburied and the monument was put up in his honour at the burial place. While a reburial a tooth and 3 fingers were removed from his body and one of those fingers is now reposited in the Museo Galileo in Florence.

Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin (09.03.1934 - 27.03.1968) - Russian pilot and cosmonaut.

Yuri Gagarin was born on 9 March 1934 in the village of Klushino.  There were four children in the family and Yuri was the third. His father, Alexey, was an able carpenter. Both father and mother worked on a collective farm. It is also known that his mother, Anna, was a voracious reader.  As parents worked their daughter helped them to bring up Yuri. In World War II the Gagarins underwent Nazi occupation and their dwelling was taken over. The family had to build a mud hut and they lived there for almost two years till the occupation ended.
When Yuri was young he took an interest in planets and cosmos. Gagarin studied at a vocational technical school and then was chosen for training at a technical high school which was located in Saratov. Afterwards Yuri affiliated himself with the “AeroClub” and tried to fly a light aircraft.
From 1955 Gagarin studied at the Orenburg Pilot’s School. He made the acquaintance of Valentina Goryacheva there. Two years later Yuri married her. Post-graduation Gagarin served at Luostari airbase. Bad weather conditions of this region made flying perilous. On 5 November 1957 Gagarin became a Lieutenant. In 1959 his rank was Senior Lieutenant.
In 1960 the 20 pilots including Gagarin were chosen for the Soviet space program. Subsequently he was chosen for an elite training group. All the pilots were tested for both psychological and physical staying power. At the end of the test program Gherman Titov and Yuri Gagarin were selected because their results were the best. Moreover, physical characteristics of these cosmonauts were the most appropriate. They both were not tall. Gagarin’s height was 1.57 metres.
Gagarin’s character was described as humble, attentive and persistent. He also had a good memory, vivid imagination, fast response and other mental faculties. An Air Force doctor considered that Gagarin understood life better than others. It should be noted that Yuri liked sports. He played ice hockey and was a basketball fan.
It is known that when the twenty pilots chose anonymously one of them for the first flight, all but three voted for Yuri Gagarin.
On 12 April 1961 the first human travelled into cosmos. Gagarin was aboard the Vostok 1 and he orbited the earth.  This great event made Yuri Gagarin famous and he received a lot of honours and medals. Gagarin became Hero of the Soviet Union.
On 27 March 1968 Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15 crash. The incident was near Kirzhach. The Cosmonaut Training Centre outside Moscow and the adjacent town of Gzhatsk were named in his honour.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates (born 28.10.1955) - American businessman.

Bill Gates is one of the most influential people in the world. He is cofounder of the most recognized brands in the computer industry with nearly every desk top computer using at least one software program from Microsoft. According to Forbes magazine Gates is the wealthiest man in the world and has been in the number 1 position for at least seven years.
Gates was born and grew up in Seattle, Washington USA. His father, William H. Gates II was a Seattle attorney and his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates was a school teacher and chairperson of the United Way charity. Gates and his two sisters had a comfortable upbringing, with Gates able to attend the exclusive secondary "Lakeside School".
Bill Gates started studying at Harvard University in 1973 where he met up with Paul Allen. Gates and Allen gates worked on a version of the programming language BASIC, that was the basis for the MITS Altair (the first microcomputer available). He did not go on to graduate from Harvard University as he left in his junior year to start what was to become the largest computer software company in the world, Microsoft Corporation.

Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation
"To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential." Microsoft Mission Statement
After dropping out of Harvard Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen set about revolutionizing the computer industry. Gates believed there should be a computer on every office desk and in every home.
In 1975 the company Micro-soft was formed, an abbreviation of microcomputer software. It soon became simply "Microsoft"® and went on to completely change the way people use computers.
Microsoft helped to make the computer easier to use with its developed and purchased software, and made it a commercial success. The success of Microsoft began with the MS-DOS computer operating system that Gates licensed to IBM. Gates also set about protecting the royalties that he could acquire from computer software by aggressively fighting against all forms of software piracy, effectively creating the retail software market that now exists today. This move was quite controversial at the time as it was the freedom of sharing that produced much innovation and advances in the newly forming software industry. But it was this stand against software piracy, that was to be central in the great commercial success that Microsoft went on to achieve.

Bill Gates Criticism
With his great success in the computer software industry also came many criticisms. With his ambitious and aggressive business philosophy, Gates or his Microsoft lawyers have been in and out of courtrooms fighting legal battles almost since Microsoft began.
The Microsoft monopoly sets about completely dominating every market it enters through either acquisition, aggressive business tactics or a combination of them. Many of the largest technology companies have fought legally against the actions of Microsoft, including Apple Computer, Netscape, Opera, WordPerfect, and sun Microsystems.

Bill Gates Wealth
With an estimated wealth of $46.6 billion in 2004, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and he should be starting to get used to the number spot as he has been there from the mid-ninties up until now. The famous investor Warren Buffett is gaining on Gates though with an estimated $42.9 billion in 2004.
Microsoft hasn't just made Bill Gates very wealthy though. According to the Forbes business magazine Paul Allen, Microsoft cofounder is the 5th richest man in the world with an estimated $21 billion. While Bill Gates' long time friend and Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer is the 19th richest man in the world at $12.4 billion.

Bill Gates Philanthropy
Being the richest man in the world has also enabled Gates to create one of the world's largest charitable foundations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of more than $28 billion, with donations totaling more than $1 billion every year. The foundation was formed in 2000 after merging the "Gates Learning Foundation" and "William H. Gates Foundation". Their aim is to "bring innovations in health and learning to the global community".
Bill Gates continues to play a very active role in the workings of the Microsoft Company, but has handed the position of CEO over to Steve Ballmer. Gates now holds the positions of "Chairman" and "Chief Software Architect". He lives near Lake Washington with his wife Melinda French Gates and their three children. Interests of Gates include reading, golf and playing bridge.

Bill Gates in the News
In March 2005 William H. Gates received an "honorary" knighthood from the queen of England. Gates was bestowed with the KBE Order (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for his services in reducing poverty and improving health in the developing countries of the world.
After the privately held ceremony in Buckingham Palace with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Gates commented on the recognition..
"I am humbled and delighted. I am particularly pleased that this honor helps recognize the real heroes our foundation (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) supports to improve health in poor countries. Their incredible work is helping ensure that one day all people, no matter where they are born, will have the same opportunity for a healthy life, and I'm grateful to share this honor with them."
The KBE Order of the British Empire is the second highest Order given out, but it is only an honorary knighthood as only citizens that are British or a part of the Commonwealth receive the full Order. This means that Gates does not become Sir Bill Gates.

Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson (born 03.01.1956) - American actor.

Way before Russell, Cate and Hugh Jackman, even before Geoffrey Rush and Sam Neill, the Antipodes could boast of a mega-star in the Hollywood firmament. One of the brightest, in fact. For, if you discount Schwarzenegger on the grounds of his cartoonish build and accent, Mel Gibson has been the biggest action hero of recent times. Furthermore, when Mel decided to produce, direct and star in his OWN action movie, he even snapped up a couple of Oscars - a very, very rare occurrence in the genre.
Yet Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson isn't, strictly speaking, Australian at all. He was born on the 3rd of January, 1956, in Peekskill, New York, the sixth of eleven children. His father, Hutton, was a brakeman for New York Central Railroad and, considering New York City no place to raise children, moved the family north to Croton-on-Hudson, then on to nearby Verplanck Point and, by 1961, on to a farmhouse at Mount Vision. Times were hard and Hutton figured he'd run the farm and do his rail job too. So he spent weekdays in New York City while the family (isolated by mother Anne's inability to drive) stuck out on the farm. It was tough, but a great place to be a kid.
In 1964, disaster struck when Hutton suffered a serious work accident and lost his job. The Gibsons were forced to move into cheap rented accommodation, with the older children having to take jobs, while Hutton entered into a compensation battle with the company. It would take three years to work out. When it did, though, it worked out well. Hutton was a strict and traditional Catholic - having at one point studied for the priesthood - and did not really approve of the cultural changes in the Sixties, regarding the hippies' penchant for mind-expansion and promiscuity as a sad sign of moral decline. Consequently, when he won $145,000 compensation, and a further $21,000 from the Jeopardy! gameshow (very bright, the Gibsons), he decided to take the family to Australia, Anne's homeland (her mother had been an opera singer who'd emigrated to the States).
It's been said that the Gibsons moved to escape the draft for Vietnam. Not true. Hutton had served in WW2 and truly despised war, but his sons could still have been drafted from Australia. Indeed, Mel's eldest brother WAS drafted, only to fail the initial tests. Also, Anne had an extended family there which would surely help as Hutton recovered from the accident.
So, off they went, via Ireland, Scotland, England and Rome, where the kids were shown their Celtic heritage (Mel's the name of an Irish saint - and it's NOT Melvin) and spent time at the Vatican. They arrived in Australia in November of 1968 and settled in a suburb north of Sydney. Mel was sent to St Leo's College, run by the Christian Brothers, where he was picked on mercilessly for his accent. Rebelling against the repressive regime, he got "whacked around for smoking, fighting, not following their stupid rules". Eventually, Hutton pulled him out and sent him to a state school - Asquith High - where he became a proper Aussie bloke, drinking , brawling and the rest. He did date a little, but usually with his mates along, being extremely shy.
After school, he thought of the priesthood, then journalism, but he had no genuine vocation, ending up employed at an orange juice bottling plant in Sydney. His sister Sheila, though, was a big admirer of Mel's elaborately staged jokes, his talent for mimicry and his ability with accents - he had, after all, learned to speak 'Strine. So, she filled in an application form for him to join the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, at the University of New South Wales. Mel went along and, somehow, was accepted.
It wasn't easy to begin with. Mel didn't take it seriously and so suffered the disapproval of students who did. He grew his hair and a beard and did all those Seventies things that have very little to do with disciplined work. He moved out of his parents' home to share a flat with three other guys. You can imagine.
But, after a while, he began to make an effort, conquering the terrible stage fright that had seen him have to sit down during his first ever performance. Playing Romeo alongside fellow student Judy Davis, he was a real success. With his hair and beard removed, people began to take notice of his extraordinary good looks. He shared a flat with Geoffrey Rush and began to exhibit some of Rush's flair and enthusiasm for theatre.
At the end of 1976, Mel and his student-buddy Steve Bisley (Bisley would appear, as Goose, in Mel's breakthrough hit Mad Max) met producer Phil Avalon and found themselves cast in the lightweight surfer movie Summer City. They were paid the union minimum of $400 but it was experience, and fun. Mel enjoyed a relationship with co-star Deborah Foreman who, once it was over, was reported to have attempted suicide at a boozy party.
The movie was a success in one respect. Mel was taken on by agent Bill Shannahan, who scored him a part in The Sullivans. This was good exposure, but Mel hated TV work, believing time constraints meant little genuinely good work was done. To learn his craft, he joined the South Australia Theatre Company and toured with Waiting For Godot. When renting a room in Adelaide, he entered the kitchen one day to find a pretty young woman, a dental assistant named Robyn Moore, making breakfast. She had a boyfriend then but, by June of 1980 she and Mel would be married, now having seven children.
Now Shannahan really came good. He got Mel an audition for the producer/director George Miller, then casting for a futuristic feast of ultraviolence called Mad Max. The night before, Mel got drunk at a party (as he often did) and became involved in a fight with three other men. They pounded him good and proper, and he showed up at the audition with stitches in his head, his nose all over the place and his jaw out of line. Incredibly, he was the perfect Max Rockatansky - possibly the most severely battered hero in screen history.
The filming was hard. With a budget of just a few hundred thousand, the cast and crew all lived in the same house, and all helped out moving equipment. And it came off. Mel shone as a cop whose wife and kid are run down and killed by a fearsome motor-gang led by The Toecutter. This, as the title suggests, makes him mad, and he goes after them, giving his final victim the choice of either dying in an inferno or cutting his own foot off. Boosted by word-of-mouth rumours that it was exceptionally brutal - remember, this was Video Nasty time, when many films were benefiting from being banned - Mad Max was a sensation, taking over $100 million.
Unfazed, Mel continued his stage education, appearing in Oedipus Rex and Henry IV. Always keen to expand his repertoire, he also starred in Tim, written by Colleen McCullough. Here he played a labourer of below-average intelligence who's befriended by older woman Piper Laurie. Choosing to highlight his character's innocence, rather than his disability, Gibson was charming and convincing, and won the Best Actor Award from the Australian Film Institute.
Now came more stage-work, and then the war movie Attack Force Z, a bad experience. Mel was disappointed that director Philip Noyce (later to make Dead Calm and Patriot Games) had left the project and, like the rest of a cast including Sam Neil, was also annoyed at the star-treatment meted out to John Philip Law. After filming ended in Thailand, he returned to Australia and, now married and needing the money, took a part in the prison drama Punishment.
Thank the Lord, matters quickly improved. Peter Weir, who'd helped re-generate the Aussie film industry with his marvellous Picnic At Hanging Rock, wanted Mel to star alongside newcomer Mark Lee in the war drama, Gallipoli. The pair would play young sprinters whose athletic careers are halted when they're sent into action in Turkey during WW1. The army uses their talents by having them race through the trenches with important messages, while the British commanders are foolishly and mercilessly sending troops over the top into unanswerable machine-gun fire. It was an extremely moving movie, and not the last time Mel would be involved in Brit-bashing. Both Braveheart and The Patriot would also portray the denizens of this sceptred isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden - DEMI-PARADISE - as a gang of plummy-voiced butchers. He'd answer outraged complaints with a cute and funny "Hey, we're giving the Germans a break". In Australia, of course, it didn't matter. Gallipoli won Gibson a second Best Actor Award.
Next came another monster hit, as he returned to Mad Max. In The Road Warrior, we see Max years after the original killing and revenge, wandering the desolate landscape with a hound whose food he selfishly gobbles himself. No semblance of law remains and a community of nice people is under siege by a fantastically dangerous horde of punky marauders. Will Max help them escape with their fuel? Not a chance. At least not until - thanks to the marauders - all his bones are broken and his eyes are popping out of his head.
Mad Max 2, undoubtedly one of the best and most exciting action films ever made, was another massive hit and made Gibson a star in America. But, rather than go down the action hero route (he'd turn down a part in The Running Man), he chose to play a reporter in Indonesia when revolution struck in 1965, in Peter Weir's The Year Of Living Dangerously. Here he had an onscreen affair with Sigourney Weaver (they had to raise his shoes for this, though Mel, at 5'9", is not short). Linda Hunt, as his crazy, tiny photographer, would win an Oscar. From here, Mel moved on to The Bounty, playing Fletcher Christian to Anthony Hopkins' Captain Bligh. The cast featured the cream of the British and Irish crop - Laurence Olivier, Edward Fox, Liam Neeson, Daniel Day-Lewis, plus stalwarts like Bernard Hill and Philip Davis and, further down the bill, John Sessions and Neil Morrissey.
The movie was filmed on Moorea, an island near Tahiti, and the shoot was marked by some serious drinking sessions. When away from his family (the kids were coming regularly now), Mel would hit the sauce with abandon. It was reported that, on one occasion, he got into another bar brawl and was so badly bruised they had to change the order of shooting. A year or so later, he'd be charged with drinking and driving, receiving a three month ban and a $300 fine. Like many very shy people, Mel found life to be more fun and himself to be more gregarious after a few drinks. But it became a problem and, by the early Nineties, he'd entered a programme to sort himself out.
After The Bounty came the first movie where Mel adopted an American accent, when he and Sissy Spacek battled to keep their farm in The River (Spacek would be Oscar-nominated). Then, once again trying to steer clear of action parts, he played a jailbird helped to escape by besotted warden's wife Diane Keaton in Mrs Soffel (helmed by Aussie director Gillian Armstrong). After this came Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome, a fairly weak sequel that featured Tina Turner and, more interestingly, Angelo Rossitto - a dwarf from the brilliant Freaks - as The Master.
Now came another monster, Lethal Weapon, the first of a series of four. This was a superior buddy movie, with Gibson playing maverick cop Martin Riggs, constantly taunting the more conservative partner, family man Danny Glover. But it wasn't JUST a buddy movie. One of the opening scenes, where Riggs has lost his wife and is contemplating suicide, saw Mel deliver a truly moving performance, excellent by anyone's standards. With the financial proceeds from his last two movies, Mel bought a 300-acre cattle ranch in the Kiewa Valley in northern Victoria, then a house in Malibu, so he wouldn't have to be away from his family so much, and the kids could stick to the same school.
After Lethal Weapon came Tequila Sunrise, where Mel played a drug dealer pursued by an old friend, now a policeman (played by Kurt Russell), with the pair of them falling for restauranteuse Michelle Pfeiffer. Gibson and Russell would become great friends and Mel, who'd been seeking a strong comedy for some years, now made Bird On A Wire with Russell's wife, Goldie Hawn. Then came another war flick, Air America.
With the Lethal Weapon franchise now in full swing, this was enough action for a while. Gibson turned down the lead in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (he also turned down the role of James Bond, TWICE - after Roger Moore had departed, and then after Timothy Dalton), and took on Shakespeare's finest, Hamlet. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, and co-starring such heavyweights as Glenn Close, Alan Bates and Paul Schofield, the movie was a huge risk for Gibson. Some critics jeered, unable to accept that Mad Max might dare to follow in the footsteps of Olivier, but Gibson really was good, more than holding his own in terrifying company. And he kept on with his "interesting" projects. Next came the tear-jerking Forever Young, where he played a man frozen for fifty years, then woken up by Elijah Wood (later Frodo Baggins in The Lord Of The Rings). Then he played alongside another kid in Man Without A Face, where he played a horribly scarred recluse who becomes a young boy's mentor. Importantly, this was also Mel's first directing experience - the thoroughly unlikely practice run for Braveheart.
Mel had formed a production company, called Icon, and had signed a $42 million, four-picture deal with Warners and got moving fast. Mel's love of opera (inherited from his gran, probably) and classical music led Icon to produce Immortal Beloved. Later, they'd make Anna Karenina, 187 and Fairy Tale: A Love Story, the last of which would see Mel turn up in the last shot as the little heroine's daddy, returned from the war. First, though, there was the Mel-starring Maverick, written by William Goldman and directed by Lethal Weapon's Richard Donner.
But it was Icon's next production that made Mel undeniably the biggest star in Hollywood. Randall Wallace (later to write Mel's We Were Soldiers), sent a script to Icon concerning William Wallace, a Scottish hero who, partly for freedom's sake and partly due to the brutalizing of his wife, went to war with Edward I and nearly won. Mel, who'd always love epics like Spartacus, went for it. The wife angle was familiar too, with Gibson taking to calling his character Mad Mac. As said, aside from the infinitely smaller Man Without A Face, Gibson had little experience of directing, and none of directing on this scale - and he knew it. Filming in Ireland, he took to carrying around a book he'd had made, titled A Beginner's Guide To Directing The Epic. He had, though, done his homework, studying the battle sequences in Kubrick's Spartacus and Orson Welles' Chimes At Midnight. He knew what he wanted and, with the help of the Irish army reserve, serving as extras, he got it.
Braveheart was a mighty achievement. Aided by great performances from Gibson, Angus Macfadyen as Robert The Bruce and especially from Patrick McGoohan as Edward Longshanks, it was invigorating, touching and tremendously brutal. The battle sequences were amongst the best ever filmed, and the story-telling was strong too. Gibson surprised everyone - for action films are not traditionally the Academy's favourites - by taking the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.
Turning down the role of another Brit icon, Steed in The Avengers, Gibson moved on to a string of huge hits. In Ransom he played a rich man taking all manner of crazy risks to rescue his kidnapped daughter. In Conspiracy Theory, co-starring Julia Roberts (who he kept sending dried rats) and directed once again by Richard Donner, he was a geek cabbie who gets drawn into a real CIA plot. Then, after Lethal Weapon 4, where Martin Riggs was unfortunately a parody of himself, there was the harsh and thrilling Payback, a remake of Lee Marvin's Point Blank with Gibson as Porter, calmly and coldly beating and threatening everyone till he gets his money back. Mel had every right to be a bit tetchy - he suffered appendicitis during the shoot and production was halted for a week while he was in hospital.
After this came Wim Wenders' more arty The Million Dollar Hotel where Gibson played an FBI agent investigating the bizarre occupants of run-down hostelry. The movie was apparently based on the ideas of U2 singer Bono, his band having performed on top of the same hotel when filming the video for Where The Streets Have No Name. After this, Mel provided the voice of Rocky Rhodes The Rhode Island Red Rooster in the animation Chicken Run (he'd earlier provided the voice of John Smith in Disney's Pocahontas).
Now came two more Big Ones. In The Patriot, as Colonel Benjamin "Ghost" Martin, he took on the English forces during the American revolutionary war. The movie was a tad sentimental and borrowed heavily from Michael Mann's superior Last Of The Mohicans. But audiences lapped it up, as they did Mel's next offering, What Women Want. Here he was ad exec Nick Marshall, a macho sexist who, having been electrocuted in the bath, can suddenly hear what women are thinking. This, of course, causes much hilarity, both in his "romantic" life and in his relationship with his teenage daughter who's plotting her first sexual experience. The movie made well over $300 million, and aside from winning him a Golden Globe nomination (he'd also received one for Ransom), it justified Mel's now incredible pay-packets. For The Patriot he received a then-groundbreaking $25 million.
On he went to We Were Soldiers, the true story of a band of 400 elite US soldiers surrounded by 2000 North Vietnamese in one of the bloodiest conflicts of recent times. Like Saving Private Ryan, much of the movie was an extended battle sequence, but it was searingly effective, nonetheless. And there was also emotional weight added by Mel's relationship with his screen wife, the excellent Madeleine Stowe.
After this, he took the lead in Signs, M. Night Shyamalan's follow-up to The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Here he played Father Graham Hess, an Episcopal minister who discovers crop circles in his fields in Buck County. But how did they get there? The media descends en masse and Hess does some research of his own, discovering to his horror that, well, as with all of Shyamalan's work, don't let anyone tell you the ending before you've seen it. Signs was a grand reinvention of the modern terror-flick and was another massive hit for Mel. Recouping a budget of $62 million in its first weekend, it topped the box office charts, later returning to the top for another two weeks. Soon passing the $200 million barrier, it was America's biggest summer hit, even outdoing Goldmember.
Having been a star for twenty years, Mel Gibson is now one of the biggest. Thankfully, he still works hard to produce good material and, perhaps better still, refuses to take his celebrity seriously. When voted The Sexiest Man Alive, for instance, he said "That implies there are a lot of dead guys who got more points than me". Various things keep his feet on the ground. There's his religion - he remains a devout, traditional Catholic, attending mass in Latin, and he's had a chapel built on his grounds. There's his family to whom he is vociferously devoted (his brother Donal is also an actor and has appeared in many Mel films - Maverick, Braveheart, Conspiracy Theory and Immortal Beloved). But perhaps it's mostly because of Australia. His character was formed there, his career was launched there, and they know it, in 1997 making him an Officer of the Order of Australia, the highest award they have. So forget the beginning, the guy's obviously a fair dinkum Aussie.

Richard Gere

Richard Gere (born 31.08.1949) - American actor.

He was born Richard Tiffany Gere, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the second of five, having three sisters and a younger brother, all looked after by his housewife mother, Doris. His father, Homer, worked in insurance and, while Richard was still young, moved the family to a farmhouse outside Syracuse, New York. In North Syracuse, Homer would run his own agency.
Attending North Syracuse High School, Richard quickly proved to be multi-talented. Though not a jock, he was active in the gym, lacrosse and ski teams. He served on the school council, and also excelled on the piano, guitar, bass and trumpet. Clearly gifted musically, he even wrote music for High School productions.
Old school-friends have recalled that Richard was never on a mission to be popular, but was anyway. He hung around in jeans and Army surplus jackets, and dated only the brightest girls (even then he valued brains over looks - how that sex symbol business must have outraged him!). One girlfriend, Diane Fredricks, has said that Richard used to take her to the movies a lot, usually to see either monster movies or old films. Already his interest in cinema had taken hold. And he had begun to act, having been approached to play the lead in a production of The King And I - primarily because "he looked good with his shirt off".
Graduating from High School in 1967, he won a gymnastics scholarship and enrolled at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, majoring in philosophy. After only two years though, he won a place with the prestigious Provincetown Players, and spent the summer of '69 with them. Provincetown, then as now, was a racy artistic community on the end of Cape Cod, with a large gay population. And Richard was wanted by pretty much everyone. Luckily, he had the personality and a budding talent to match his looks, and performed well when handed the top roles.
With the summer season finished, Richard knew he'd make acting his career. When one of the Players' artistic directors offered him a place with the Seattle Repertory Company, he ditched college and travelled to the Pacific North-West where, for a while, he became the company's "house hippie", being used to represent "the kids" in their productions. But he soon became bored of this and, in late 1970, took off to try his luck in New York.
Here he resided in a cockroach-infested dive on the Lower East Side, living with a lover he'd met in Seattle (actually the Repertory company's stage manager), who was the first "real" woman in his life. Sadly, the relationship didn't last. Winning a part in a folk musical, Richard took up with his co-star, Penelope Milford, and the couple moved into a place - formerly a plumbing store - between two gay bars up near the Hudson River piers.
It was a crazy time. His relationship with Milford was gleefully open, and there was a lot of drinking, as well as all the other pleasures associated with youngsters in the early Seventies. His stage career went well, too. He took the title role in Long Time Coming, Long Time Gone, and would later appear in two Sam Shepard productions, Back Bog Beast Bait and, with an outstanding performance, in Killer's Head. Before this, his Broadway breakthrough came with the rock opera Soon, and then the New York production of the British farce Habeas Corpus.
Britain would, in fact, have a major part in Gere's early success. On Broadway, he worked as the understudy to Barry Bostwick's Danny Zuko in Grease (the part John Travolta played in the movie). But when the production moved to London in 1973, it was Richard who went as Zuko. Here he really shone and was invited to join the Young Vic Company for a season - very rare for an American - and played in the likes of The Taming Of The Shrew. Gere had a great time, buying a motorbike and storming round London in black leather. He'd bring the bike and the gear back to New York for another round of storming and wild partying.
But at some point the wildness had to stop. And this point came when Gere was thrown off his first movie, The Lords Of Flatbush, his place being taken by a young Sylvester Stallone. Massively disappointed and badly shaken, Richard went to bed for three days. When he reappeared, he was changed - still wild, but now more focused. He took up transcendental meditation and aimed at spiritual and professional advancement.
Film roles quickly came his way. He played a pimp in Report To The Commissioner, a gritty, Serpico-style drama where an undercover policewoman was killed by a fellow officer (co-stars would include Hector Elizondo and William Devane, both of whom would appear with Gere again). Then there was Strike Force where Gere was state trooper Walter Spenser, teaming up with a New York detective and an FBI agent to bust a drug ring. Then he was Raider in Baby Blue Marine, starring Jan-Michael Vincent and Katherine Helmond (later Jessica Tate in the wonderful Soap).
And now came the breakthrough, with Looking For Mr Goodbar. Here Diane Keaton played a teacher of deaf kids who at night trawls the bars of New York, seeking sex with strangers. Throughout, you have the doomed sense that she'll find trouble - and, in a horrifying climax, she does - but you can't tell which of her men will provide it. They all might - the hypocritical copper, the sicko furniture salesman, the suspect social worker and, of course, Richard. As a psycho swinger, he's beautiful, predatory, slick and hugely dangerous.
Next came Robert Mulligan's Bloodbrothers, about a blue collar Bronx family, where Richard played the sensitive son who wants to work with children rather than follow his folks into the construction industry. And then there was Days Of Heaven, directed by the legendary Terrence Malick. Here Gere and Brooke Adams played a couple who flee poverty in Chicago and take off for the Texas panhandle where, pretending to be brother and sister, they work for rich farmer Sam Shepard. He's dying, but falls for Adams, and she and Gere decide that she should marry him for the inheritance. And then he doesn't die! It was a brilliant movie, a match for Malick's earlier Badlands, taking a panoramic view of America before the Great War, with all the characters enduring terrible loneliness and seething with rage.
Now Gere turned to Britain once more, and joined William Devane in John Schlesinger's Yanks, penned by Colin Welland (soon to give his famous "The British are coming" speech at the Oscars when a winner for Chariots Of Fire). This involved American soldiers billeted in England before D-Day, and their effect on the ladies. It was easy to see why Lisa Eichhorn's Jean might fall for Gere's smooth, sweet Matt.
Suddenly, Gere's life had changed. When he returned from filming Yanks he found that Looking For Mr Goodbar and Days Of Heaven had made him a movie star. In itself, this was a good thing, but all the magazines were salivating over "sexy Richard Gere" and, as a stage actor of some ten years experience, he did not take kindly to it. In one interview, when asked yet again about being a sex object, he snapped "You want to see a sex object?", and pulled out his penis.
He tried hard to build a different life for himself. Having parted company with Penelope Milford, he'd began another open relationship, this time with Brazilian artist Sylvia Martins. Together they travelled extensively, first to Tibet, where Gere met up with lamas and monks. Later, they'd be off to Honduras, Nicaragua and, while there was a war going on, El Salvador. They'd crash-land in a helicopter on Bali, Richard then going off alone to meditate on a volcano. All of these experiences combined to increase Gere's desire to help others, particularly tribal peoples facing the theft of their land, or even extinction. Eventually, he would be co-founder of Tibet House, an organisation dedicated to the preservation of Tibetan culture, and once headed by Uma Thurman's father, Robert. He'd also become involved with Survival International, aiding tribal peoples everywhere. Indeed, when opening the Harrods sale in 1994, he donated his entire Ј50,000 fee to SI. "If people lose their land," he once explained "they have nothing. You lose your land, you lose your culture, you lose your self".
With the onset of the Eighties came superstardom, and the most clear-cut example of Gere battling to control his public image. First there was American Gigolo. Starring hot Richard (who'd stepped in for John Travolta) and promoted with the song Call Me by the even hotter Blondie, it had its populist side. And, with Richard starring as a sexually expert escort who services older women and gets tied up in a murder case, it was very controversial. So you can understand why the movie, a big hit, made Richard even more of a sex symbol than he was. But there was another side to American Gigolo, a side that would have appealed to Gere the actor. Written and directed by Paul Schrader - who'd penned Taxi Driver and Hardcore, and would later write Raging Bull and Affliction - this was not just a sexy thriller. It was a study of the seamy and perverse Los Angeles underworld, of sex and dying in high society, Schrader yet again revealing a world we do not ordinarily see. And the characters weren't simply glamour-pusses. The movie was about displacement and loneliness, about money and power and, considering Gere's role, it was about narcissism, self-love and self-confidence.
And then there was Bent. With American Gigolo, Gere may have been playing with his sexy image, trying to subvert it by so over-stating the case for his sexiness. But with Bent there could be no doubt that he was attacking that image with righteous fury. For Bent saw him back on Broadway as a decadent, manipulative homosexual trying to survive in a concentration camp and finally choosing to die rather than deny his true self. Richard was a sensation. Not only did he pick up a Theatre World Award, but he must have hoped people would recognise the depths of both himself as an actor, and his latest movie, American Gigolo.
But it just got worse. Richard appeared bare-chested on the cover of People magazine, with banner headlines calling him "the reluctant sex symbol" and America went potty for this new male totty. Gere couldn't believe it. He sacked his press agent, who had been ordered to with-hold the pictures. Unfortunately, the damage was done. In fact, an awful lot of damage was done during this period. Seldom has an actor so suffered from being mistaken for his screen characters. For every woman that wanted the American gigolo, ten men wanted to kick his head in. One disapproving trucker actually ran his car off the road. But male revenge does not always manifest itself in physical violence. Often, the victim's reputation is viciously shredded instead.
People were jealous, and Gere's (despite his own protestations) was a famously sexual persona, so the attack was sexually based. The rumour spread that Gere, apparently a closet homosexual and a decadent pervert, had wrapped a gerbil up in masking-tape and slipped it into his anus, in the hope that its struggles to escape (I gotta get OUT of this shit-hole!) would be uniquely pleasurable. But something went wrong. Maybe the masking-tape came loose, allowing the dying creature to tear at his innards with its pin-point claws. Maybe he couldn't get it out again, and infection set in. Whatever, the story went that Gere was forced to make a top secret visit to LA's Cedars-Sinai hospital to have it surgically removed.
It wasn't true. Records showed that Gere had been on another spiritually-elevating trip to India when he was supposed to have been in hospital. But the story did not go away. So strong was his image, so powerful was the hype, that people really thought he must be some kind of sexual genius. It would be better for everyone - for the men who would never be like him, and the women who would never have him - if he wasn't heterosexual. And let's not forget the people who thought that he was too damned convincing in Bent. Incredibly, this story would plague him for twenty years. Luckily, though raised a Methodist, he'd be a Buddhist throughout - the discipline and patience he learned must surely have helped.
Good press, bad press, it was all grist to the mill. And Richard's next movie was a REALLY big hit. In An Officer And A Gentleman he was Zack Mayo (ANOTHER part turned down by Travolta), a young man from the wrong side of the tracks who, despite his violent and dismissive father (Robert Loggia), decides to attend Navy Officer Candidate School. Here, whipped into shape by Oscar-winning Louis Gossett Jr ("You eye-ballin' me, boy?"), he falls for factory worker Debra Winger, passes the course and everyone throws their hats in the air. Like American Gigolo, the movie was a great deal more gritty than your standard romance, but once more Gere, who received a Golden Globe nomination for his pains, was seen as Loverboy Number One.
From now on, when he wasn't travelling or working for charity, Gere made a mighty effort to achieve professional respect. In Breathless, a remake of Jean-Luc Godard's debut A Bout De Souffle, he played Jesse Lujack, a car thief, killer and all-round desperado, who goes on the run with sweet young French girl Valerie Kaprisky. Deliberately, it was a major departure for Richard. Before, it was his stillness onscreen that captivated, the way he allowed you to watch his mind working. Lujack, though, was a live-wire, loud-mouthed and funky, strutting and preening, his lust for life overflowing. Gere was excellent. Sadly, the film was not a success. Neither was his next effort, The Honorary Consul, written by Graham Greene and concerning a dark love triangle in South America.
But Gere was still a huge star, scoring leads in the biggest productions. Next came Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club, concerning the Harlem nightspot of the 20s and 30s. Here Richard played Dixie Dwyer, a cornet player who saves the life of gangster Dutch Schultz (James Remar) and is employed to look after Schultz's girlfriend (Diane Lane - 18 years later to co-star as Gere's straying wife in Unfaithful). Love trouble, of course, ensues, with complications added by Dwyer's nutty brother, played by Nicolas Cage. Drawing on his musical experience from High School, Gere both played and sang.
It was another flop. But it didn't crash as badly as Richard's next movie, King David. This was a Biblical epic, directed by Bruce Beresford (Tender Mercies, Breaker Morant), with Richard as the titular monarch dealing with Saul, Goliath and Bathsheba (played by the wonderful Alice Krige). Strong support came from Brit thesps like Edward Woodward and Cherie Lunghi, but audiences were not drawn to this slow re-telling of ancient stories, particularly not as sexy Richard was hidden by a beard AND indulging in weird dancing. So purposefully assaulting that public image, he was struggling to find a balance between artistic and commercial success.
The mid-Eighties saw him slowly slip away into small productions. First came No Mercy, a tough action thriller where Gere played a maverick cop hunted through New Orleans, along with Kim Basinger. Then he was a political consultant drawn into all manner of shadiness in Sidney Lumet's moody, uninvolving Power. And then he was back out in Days Of Heaven territory with Miles From Home as one of two brothers who burn their farm rather than lose it to the bank and then go on the run. John Malkovich featured, as he would in actor-director Gary Sinise's next effort, Of Mice And Men.
Most reckoned that, by the end of the Eighties, Gere was finished. In fact, having rid himself of the "sex symbol" tag, he was pretty much where he wanted to be. And then, suddenly, he was huge again. Success re-arrived as a double strike. First came Mike Figgis's brilliant Internal Affairs. As Dennis Peck, a ruthless renegade cop who runs all the scams and seduces most women he meets, he was tremendous, like a murderous American gigolo-come-entrepreneur. But he was also completely believable, showing that Peck has his own system of morals and responsibilities - indeed, he is OUTRAGED when the uptight and jealous Andy Garcia comes to break up his party. And his quiet, Zen-like qualities truly suited a character so dominant, manipulative and on top of it all.
Internal Affairs secured Gere's rep, but Pretty Woman made him an A-list star once more. Here he played a corporate breaker who needs an escort for a week and hires fledgling hooker Julia Roberts. He teaches her sophistication, she teaches him to stop being a greedy, life-ruining corporate pig-dog. It was thoroughly charming stuff with Richard shining as the cool smoothie gradually enchanted by Roberts' ungainly ebullience (he also wrote the piano piece he plays). Famously, it was an enormo-hit, sending Roberts into the stratosphere and earning Gere, who'd been there and come back, a second Golden Globe nomination.
Life was looking good. His career was on the up, Tibet House was in motion, and he'd found love with the super-model Cindy Crawford. After splitting from Sylvia Martins, Gere had had a relationship with fashion icon Tina Chow (later to die from AIDS-related illness). Then, due to the machinations of Shirley Ritts, mother of Gere's friend and photographer Herb, he'd met Crawford. It's been said that this love revitalised his career, but he nearly lost it. On December 12th, 1991, Crawford told long-term bachelor Gere that if he didn't marry her she'd leave. That same day, on a Disney jet arranged by Jerry Katzenberg, they flew to Las Vegas and were married.
Now Richard began to alternate between small, "interesting" projects and bigger-budget productions. First came Rhapsody In August, where four young Japanese kids become obsessed with the nuclear assault on Nagasaki, when visiting their grandmother there. Richard popped up as her Eurasian nephew. It was a minor role, but it did allow him to work with director Akira Kurosawa. Then came Final Analysis, a superior psycho-thriller where Gere played a psychiatrist being used and abused by patient Uma Thurman and her sultry sister (Basinger once again). After this was Sommersby, Gere's second remake of a French hit, this time Le Retour De Martin Guerre. Here he played a man returning home to his farm and wife Jodie Foster after the Civil War. But is he REALLY the husband, or an imposter who's learned everything about this place from the real fellow, now dead? And, being as it's Richard Gere, does Jodie care?
Co-incidentally, Gere's next picture starred Nathalie Baye, who'd played Foster's part in the original. This was And The Band Played On, a controversial cable film concerning the discovery of and early fight against AIDS. Many stars made cameo appearances, Gere appearing as a choreographer, but he stood out, receiving an Emmy nomination. Next came something of a pet project,Mr Jones, which reunited Gere with Mike Figgis. Here he played a manic depressive who engages in a torrid affair with his psychiatrist, played by Lena Olin.
It wasn't that great. And neither were Richard's next two movies. Intersection, a third remake of a French movie (Les Choses De La Vie), saw him having to choose between his haughty partner (Sharon Stone) and his hot new lover, Lolita Davidovich. Then First Knight saw him racing about as Sir Lancelot, rescuing and romancing Guinevere (Julia Ormond), much to the chagrin of Sean Connery's King Arthur. It really wasn't good, and Richard's decision to play Lancelot as a late 20th Century American gigolo, with hindsight, seems flawed.
Life wasn't that rosy. Richard had never been allowed to escape the rumours that sprang up after American Gigolo and, as Crawford had suffered similar accusations, as a couple they were constantly under fire. The marriage, it was endlessly alleged, was a cover-up for their homosexuality. Eventually, they actually took a full-page ad out in the Times, announcing that they were heterosexual, monogamous and in love. A few months later, sadly, they split. Rumours flew that Crawford was seeing her ex, club owner Rande Gerber, and that, while filming First Knight, Gere had been involved with 22-year-old British actress Laura Bailey (and then model Elizabeth Nottoli). The British tabloids went crazy, but Gere took it bravely. Appearing at a gay/lesbian fundraiser in London in October, 1994, he said "You've all heard some rumours about me over the years. I guess this is the time to do it. My name is Richard Gere... and I am a lesbian".
1995 saw Gere and Crawford divorce. Then Primal Fear pulled his career together again. Here he was fine as a hot-shot lawyer defending an altar-boy who's whacked an archbishop. But as the defence continues, he first discovers that he can maybe save this no-hoper, and then slowly realises that the no-hoper may actually be an evil genius. Richard did well to stay in the picture as Ed Norton exploded in his Oscar-nominated debut.
Now came another pet project, Red Corner. Here he played Jack Moore, a US lawyer in Beijing to close a TV deal, who gets framed for murder and forced to prove his innocence by a cruel and unyielding government. Still fighting for Tibetan freedom, this was a chance to have a pop at the Chinese authorities, and Gere used it. He arranged a special premiere of the movie in Washington DC, just before an official visit by Chinese president Jiang Zemin and, during the visit, addressed a pro-Tibetan rally outside the White House.
Red Corner was not a smash, and neither was The Jackal, where Gere played an IRA prisoner who helps the FBI in their pursuit of Bruce Willis's super-assassin. It was odd to see the pair star together for, just as John Travolta's refusals had allowed Gere to break through, so Gere's refusal of Die Hard had set up Willis for his first major hit.
Big money talks loud and, after many years of trying, Hollywood got Gere and Julia Roberts back together for Runaway Bride. Here Richard played a reporter who's assigned to the case of a woman who keeps leaving men at the altar. He makes mistakes in his piece, gets fired and attempts to redeem himself by researching the story properly. And the charming inevitable ensues. Once more, Hector Elizondo featured, having appeared in Gere's movie debut, as well as American Gigolo and Pretty Woman.
Runaway Bride was yet another smash and, inevitably, Gere's next two pictures weren't. Autumn In New York, where he was an ageing playboy who falls for a terminally ill Winona Ryder, was pretty sappy. Then there was Robert Altman's Dr T And The Women which was far more effective. Here Gere was well cast as a Dallas gynaecologist who knows everything about women's bodies but nothing about their minds, thus he can't cope with his wife, Farrah Fawcett's breakdown or the problems of his daughters, played by Kate Hudson and Tara Reid.
Then, after a two year gap, Richard entered his most successful period since the early Eighties. In The Mothman Prophecies he played a reporter who finds weird pictures drawn by his wife before she died. Two years later, he suddenly finds himself several hundred miles from where he thought he was, weird stuff is going on, and other people are drawing those weird pix. It was an excellent thriller and a surprise smash, as was Unfaithful, based AGAIN on a French hit, this time Claude Chabrol's La Femme Infidele. Here Richard reunited with Cotton Club co-star Diane Lane as a steady suburban couple whose world is thrown into utter confusion when she embarks on an affair with sexy hunk Olivier Martinez. Directed by Adrian Lyne, it could have simply been Fatal Attraction with the sexes reversed. Thankfully, it was far more interesting than that.
And then, as if turning full circle, Richard appeared in a musical, just as he had in his early years in New York and London. In Chicago, he played Billy Flynn, the lawyer of two warring stage heroines (both of whom are secretly murderesses) - newcomer Renee Zellweger and falling star Catherine Zeta- Jones. As their battle continues, his position becomes ever more confused and precarious.
So, with three successive hits, Richard Gere is back on top. And he's a happy dad, too. First he found love with Carey Lowell, daughter of a famous geologist and a woman as well-travelled as himself. She was also a well-known fashion model, then a TV star in Law And Order and A League Of Their Own, as well as winning small roles in Sleepless In Seattle and Leaving Las Vegas. Having fallen for each other, in February 2000 they had a son, Homer James Jigme - Jigme being Tibetan for "fearless" and married in secret in 2002. The family live in considerable luxury, Gere having earned $13 million for Runaway Bride and $15 million each for Unfaithful and The Mothman Prophecies.
That said, Richard Gere would be just as happy in a mud-hut (and often is). Like his friend, the Dalai Lama, he's that kid of guy.

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler (20.04.1889 - 30.04.1945) - German politician.

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20 th 1889 in Braunau-am-Inn, Austria. The town is near to the Austro-German border, and his father, Alois, worked as a customs officer on the border crossing. In 1896, his mother Klara gave birth to Adolf 's sister, Paula, who survived to outlive him.
Adolf Hitler grew up with a poor record at school and left, before completing his tuition, with an ambition to become an artist he unsuccessfully applied for admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.

The Vagabond - 1909-1913
Klara Hitler died from cancer when Adolf was nineteen and from then onwards he had no relatives willing or able to support him. He had declined to take regular employment and took occasional menial jobs and sold some of his paintings or advertising posters whenever he could to provide sustenance.

Munich and The Great War - 1913-1918
At the outbreak of the First World War, in 1914, he volunteered for service in the German army and was accepted into the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. Hitler fought bravely in the war and was promoted to corporal and decorated with both the Iron Cross Second Class and First Class.

Early Politics - 1918-1919
Between December 1918 and March 1919 Hitler worked at a prisoner-of-war camp at Traunstein. He was asked to become part of a local army organization which was responsible for persuading returning soldiers not to turn to communism or pacifism.
During his training for this tasks and during his subsequent duties he was able to hone his oratory skills. As part of his duties he was also asked to spy on certain local political groups.

The First Hofbrauhaus Speech - 1919-1920
Given responsibility for publicity and propaganda, Hitler first succeeded in attracting over a hundred people to a meeting held in October at which he delivered his first speech to a large audience.In February 1920 he organized a much larger event in the Munich Hofbrauhaus, and presented a twenty-five point programme of ideas which were to be the basis of the party. The name of the party was itself changed from German's Workers Party to the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi for short) on April 1st 1920.
Hitler continued to expand his influence in the party and began to form a private group of thugs which he used to quash disorder at party meetings and later to break up rival party's meetings. This group subsequently became the Sturmabteilung or S.A. - Hitler's brown shirted storm troopers. He also became the regular main speaker at party events from then onwards, attracting large crowds for each meeting. During the summer of 1920 Hitler chose the swastika as the Nazi party emblem.

Leader of the Nazi Party - 1921
By 1921 Adolf Hitler had virtually secured total control of the Nazi party, and had its members to accept him as formal leader of the party with dictatorial powers.

The Beer Hall Putsch - 1923
Up to November 1923 Hitler continued to build up the strength of the Nazi Party. On November 8th 1923 Hitler led an attempt to take over the local Bavarian Government in Munich in an action that became known as the "Beer Hall Putsch." The coup was not successful. It was ended on the morning of November 9th, when a column of three thousand SA men headed by Hitler and General Ludendorff (one of the most senior generals of the First World War) were halted on their way to the centre of Munich by armed police. Hitler had fled the scene and was later arrested and charged with treason. After his trial for treason he was sentenced to five years in Landsberg prison, however he had successfully used the trial itself to gain publicity for himself and his ideas. During his term in prison Hitler began dictating his thoughts and philosophies to Rudolf Hess which became the book "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle).

Re-Building the Nazi Party - 1924-1932
Hitler was released from Landsberg prison in December 1924 after serving only six months of his sentence. Then Hitler created the infamous SS (Schutzstaffel) which was initially intended to be Hitler's bodyguard under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler.
The collapse of the Wall Street. stock exchange in New York 1929 led to a world wide recession which hit Germany especially hard. All loans to Germany from foreign countries dried up, German industrial production slumped and millions were made unemployed. These conditions were beneficial to Hitler and his Nazi campaigning. President Hindenburg was forced to dissolve the Reichstag and call for new elections. The Nazi Party won 6.4 million votes which made them the second largest party in the Reichstag. At this time Hitler also began to win over the support of both the army and the big industrialists, the latter contributing substantially to the finances of the Nazi Party.

Hitler Versus Hindenburg - 1932
In February 1932 Hitler decided to stand against Hindenburg in the forthcoming Presidential election. In order to do this he became a German citizen on 25th February 1932. In the 1932 presidential elections Hindenburg was re-elected to office and Hitler was forced to wait for another opportunity to win power.

Nazis Become the Largest Party - 1932
Hitler Becomes Chancellor - 1932-1933
In September 1932, the Nazi members of the Reichstag, together with support form the Center Party elected the prominent Nazi Herman Goering as President of the Reichstag (equivalent to House Speaker). Using his new position, Goering managed to prevent the Chancellor from presenting an order to dissolve the Reichstag, whilst a vote of no confidence in the Chancellor and his government was passed. On January 30th, 1933 President Hindenburg decided to appoint Hitler Chancellor in a coalition government with Papen as Vice-Chancellor.

The Burning of the Reichstag - February 1933
The penultimate step towards Adolf Hitler gaining complete control over the destiny of Germany were taken on the night of 27th February 1933 when the Reichstag was

destroyed by fire. The fire was almost certainly planned by the Nazis, Goebbels and Goering in particular. A Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was made scapegoat for the fire, but the main outcome was that Hitler was given an excuse to have all the Communist deputies of the Reichstag arrested.

The Enabling Act - March 1933
Thus dictatorial powers were finally conferred, legally, on Adolf Hitler. By July 14th Hitler had proclaimed a law stating that the Nazi Party was to be the only political party allowed in Germany. The Nazification of Germany was underway.

The Night of the Long Knives - 1934
After the initial rise to power of the Nazis, many of them, including the head of the SA Ernst Roehm, wanted to see a further change in the power structure of Germany by taking over control of big businesses and installing the SA as the main army of Germany with the existing army subordinate to it. Hitler however thought differently and wanted to keep the German economy in good shape, reduce unemployment and enable him to quickly re-arm the Wehrmacht. To Hitler, the SA was purely a political force not a military one. In June Hitler ordered the SA to go on leave for the entire month. Hitler ordered Himmler and Goering to take action against the leaders of the SA. On June 30th 1934 Himmler's SS and Goering's special police arrested and executed the leaders of the SA, including Ernst Roehm, and many others not connected with the SA, but against whom the Nazi leaders had a score to settle.

The Death of Hindenburg August 1934
President Hindenburg died on August 2nd 1934. Hitler had already agreed with the Cabinet that upon Hindenburg's death the offices of President and Chancellor would be combined. Having already ensured the support of the Army, Hitler went a step further by making the whole of the armed forces swear an oath of loyalty to him personally. A plebiscite was then held - 90% of voters gave their approval. Thus Hitler had become "Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor" and the title of President was then abolished.

"Nazification" - 1934-1937
During the years following Hitler's consolidation of power he set about the "Nazification" of Germany and its release from the armament restrictions of the Versailles Treaty, function as a trade union. The churches were persecuted and ministers who preached non-Nazi doctrine were frequently arrested by the Gestapo and carted off to concentration camps. All youth associations were abolished and re-formed as a single entity as the Hitler Youth organisation. The Jewish population was increasingly persecuted and ostracised from society . Hostility towards Jews from other Germans was encouraged and even shops began to deny entry to Jews. From a very early stage, Hitler geared the German economy towards war. He appointed Dr. Hjalmar Schacht minister of economics with instructions to secretly increase armaments production. This put Germany on a total war economy and entailed strict control of imports, materials prices and wages as well as the creation of factories and industrial plants to produce essential war materials (e.g. synthetic rubber, fuels and steel). Workers were low paid and their freedom to move between jobs was increasingly restricted. Hitler was the law when it came to the judicial system and had the ultimate say over legal actions of any kind. Any judge who was not favourable to the Nazi regime was dismissed, and a "Special Court" for political crimes and a "Peoples Court" for accusations of treason were introduced. Both of these courts were controlled by the Nazi Party.

Breaking the Versailles Treaty - 1934-1937
Hitler ordered the army to be trebled in size, from the 100,000 man Versailles Treaty limit, to 300,000 men by October of 1934. In addition, Goering had also been tasked by Hitler with the training of air force pilots and the design of military aircraft. In March 1935 Hitler decided to take a gamble and test the resolve of Britain and France by authorising Goering to reveal to a British official the existence of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force).There was little reaction (its existence was already known anyway). At the same time that Hitler was increasing the strength of the armed forces, he was also following a policy of making speeches proclaiming a desire for peace and the folly of war.

The Re-militarisation of the Rhineland - 1936
On March 7th 1936 a small force of German troops marched across the Rhine bridges into the demilitarised areas of Germany towards Aachen, Trier and Saarbruecken. Thus, breaking the Locarno Pact of 1925.Immediately following the re-militarisation of the Rhineland areas, Hitler once again preached in public his desire for peace throughout Europe and offered to negotiate new non-aggression pacts with several countries including France and Belgium. At the same time rapid construction of German defensive fortifications began along the French and Belgian frontiers.

Weakening of Austrian Security and the Birth of the Axis - 1936
The security that Hitler had gained for Germany from the military stronghold in the Rhineland meant less security for those countries in Central Europe (e.g. Austria and Czechoslovakia) who were reliant on a swift response from France in the event of German aggression. This led the Austrian Government, headed by Dr. Schuschnigg, during the summer of 1936, to begin a course of appeasement of Hitler by, for example, giving Austrian Nazis influential positions within the government in return for a pledge from Hitler to confirm his recognition of Austrian sovereignty. The position of Austria was further undermined in October 1936 when the Italian dictator, Mussolini, who had previously pledged to maintain Austrian independence, formed an alliance with Hitler. This alliance, which became known as the Rome-Berlin Axis had been formed following the German and Italian support of fellow fascist, General Franco, in the Spanish Civil War. The Axis partnership included an agreement on a common foreign policy between the two countries.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (20 марта [1 апреля] 1809 года - 21 февраля [4 марта] 1852 года) - Russian writer.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born on 20 March 1809 in the village of Sorochyntsi. It was situated in Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire. Now this territory belongs to Ukraine. The ancestors of Gogol’s mother were Polish landowners. It is known that his father, Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, composed poetry both in Russian and Ukrainian.  He died when Nikolai was fifteen years old. The whole family spoke both Ukrainian and Russian. When Nikolai was a child he helped his uncle with various plays in his home theater.
From 1820 to 1828 Gogol studied at a school of higher art which was located in Nizhyn. At that time he started to write. Gogol did not have many friends at school and some of his classmates called him “mysterious dwarf”. At the same time two or three of his schoolmates became his close friends.
At an early age Gogol developed taciturn temperament which was expressed by distressing self-consciousness and infinite ambition. He additionally developed a faculty for mimicry. Consequently Gogol became an incomparable reader of his writings and had an idea to be an actor.
In 1828 he left the school and moved to St Petersburg. Gogol dreamt of being literary celebrity and brought with him a poem Hans Kuchelgarten. It was later published entitled “V. Alov”. Gogol sent his work to different magazines but most of them ridiculed it. Afterwards he bought all the magazines and destroyed them. After that Gogol swore that he’d never begin writing again.
In 1831 Gogol presented Ukrainian stories (Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka). This work was a great success. In a year he presented the second volume of these stories. In 1835 two volumes were in the collection of stories called Mirgorod. During this time Russian critics saw in Gogol the emergence of a Ukrainian, rather than Russian. Afterwards his writings were used for illustrating differences between Ukrainian and Russian national characters. At the same time Gogol became interested in Ukrainian history. He tried to get a job at the history department at Kiev University. The Russian minister of education and Pushkin tried to help him but eventually Gogol couldn’t obtain an appointment at this university.
Gogol’s interest in history was an incitement to him to write a fictional story Taras Bulba where he described Ukrainian Cossacks. At this time Gogol became friends with Mykhaylo Maksymovych who was a naturalist and historian. In 1834 he became Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg.
From 1832 to 1836 Gogol worked hard and during this time he was in touch with Pushkin. In April 1836 he presented his comedy The Government Inspector (Revizor). This work was an enormous success and after this event other Russian critics such as Vissarion Belinsky and Stepan Shevyrev reclassified Gogol from a Ukrainian to a Russian writer.
Between 1836 and 1848 Gogol travelled abroad. His tour included a visit to Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy and other countries. In the winter of 1836-1837 Gogol stayed in Paris where he was in touch with Polish exiles and Russian expatriates. He spent a lot of time with the Polish poets Bohdan Zalesky and Adam Mickievicz. Gogol finally moved to Rome where he spent most of his twelve years from 1836. He became interested in Italian literature, opera and art. In 1838 Gogol made the acquaintance of Count Ioseph Vielhorskiy who was 23 years old. He suffered from tuberculosis and Gogol tried to help him but Vielhorskiy died in a year.
In 1837 Pushkin died and this event made a lasting impression on Gogol.  After Pushkin’s death his main work was the satirical epic Dead Souls. At the same time Gogol amended The Portrait and Taras Bulba. Moreover he wrote the second comedy Marriage (Zhenitba) and started working on his noted short story, The Overcoat.
In 1841 Gogol completed the first part of Dead Souls and brought it to Russia. This work was presented in 1842. The censorship insisted on renaming of the book. Eventually it was entitled The Adventures of Chichikov. This work made Gogol famous.
Gogol spent his last years travelling throughout the country. He also spent a lot of time with his friends such as Osyp Bodiansky, Sergei Aksakov, Maksymovych and others. His health declined. In February 1852 Gogol destroyed some of his manuscripts including the second part of Dead Souls. 9 days later he died. Gogol was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Selena Gomez

Selena Gomez (22.07.1992) - American actress and singer

Selena Gomez is a well-known American actress, singer, composer. She starred in the TV series “Barney & Friends”, in the films “Ramona and Beezus”, “Hotel Transylvania”.  As a singer she released numerous studio and solo albums. She was born on July 22nd, 1992, in Texas. Her father was Mexican, while her mother was of Anglo-Italian origin. She was named after a singer Selena, who was popular in those years. When the girl was five year old her parents divorced. Her mother was a theatre actress and inspired Selena to become an actress as well. As a child she was often seen with her mother backstage. When she turned six, she already knew she wanted to become an actress.
She started attending the shootings and castings with her mother. Once she had a birthday and got a random gift - the role of Gianna in the TV series “Barney & Friends”. During the shooting she made friends with Demi Lovato. The popularity came after a series of films, including “Wizards of Waverley Palace”, “Another Cinderella Story”, “Hannah Montana”. In 2010, Selena received a diploma of completed secondary education on home basis. In 2008, the young actress signed a contract with Hollywood Records to contribute her music to the “Fairies” cartoon and several teenage films. The next year, together with her band “Selena Gomez & the Scene” she released her debut album “Kiss & Tell”. One of her songs was included into the album “Pop It, Rock It” with many other popular songs. Her songs refer mainly to pop-rock, dance-pop and synthpop styles.
In 2010, a young actress played one of the lead roles in the comedy “Ramona and Beezus”. The same year she voiced a princess from Luc Besson’s film and her band released the second album. In 2011, the third album was released. Her single “Love You Like a Love Song”, included in this album, became the US platinum hit four times. After that she decided to rest from music for a while and to dedicate herself to movies. In 2012, she took part in voicing the cartoon “Hotel Transylvania” and starred in “Spring Breakers”. In October of the same year, she returned to studio to record a new album. Starting from 2011 Selena dated a famous teenage singer Justin Bieber. However, in 2012 the couple broke up.

Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev (born 02.03.1931) - Russian politician.

Mikhail Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye, Stavropol territory in North Caucasus, to a peasant family in a small village. His father was an agricultural mechanic on a collective farm. In 1942 at the age of 11 his district was occupied by the Germans, leading to 3 years of hardship during the Second World War. After spending time as an agricultural assistant in 1950 Mikhail Gorbachev enrolled as a law student in the University of Moscow. Here at university Mikhail Gorbachev became a full member of the Soviet Union Communist Party (CPSU). Also at university Mikhail met and married his life partner Raisa Maximova Gorbachev.
After receiving his degree in law in 1956 Mikhail made rapid progress within the Communist Party. By 1970 Mikhail had become the first Secretary for Stavropol territory, governing an area of 2.4 million people. By 1980 he had been made the youngest full member of the Politburo. After the death of Chernenko in 1985 M.Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party a position of enormous power.
During his period in office M.Gorbachev introduced several policies which revolutionised the internal and external affairs of the Soviet Union. Firstly Perestroika “or restructuring” involved opening up the Soviet economy to market forces. By 1987 private ownership of business was allowed for the first time since the 1920s. These reforms came partly out of the inefficiencies Gorbachev had seen in State controlled agricultural sectors. Due to the large scale inefficiencies within the Soviet economy the transformation to a market economy has often been a painful one. However after several years of inflation and falling GDP the Russian economy has started to stabilise and this policy is generally viewed favourably by the Russians.
In internal affairs Gorbachev introduced the concept of Glasnost (openness) this was a distinct break with the authoritarian past of the Soviet Union. Glasnost led to greater freedom of speech, freedom of worship and a reduction in State control over individual lives. Many 1000s of political prisoners were released during Gorbachev’s period in government. Ironically this greater freedom of speech was used to great effect later by the many critics of Gorbachev within the Soviet Union.
End Of The Cold WarIn the 1980s the Soviet economy was struggling due to the inefficiencies of a planned economy but also the huge sums spent on the arms race. Gorbachev felt the Soviet Union could no longer afford to spend such great sums on military spending and therefore sought a reduction the arms. This led to nuclear missile reduction treaties with America and effectively ended the Cold War which had dominated international relations since 1945. Western leaders such as R.Reagan, G.Bush and M.Thatcher spoke warmly of their impressions of this “new style” Russian leader. In 1989 the Soviet Army also retreated from Afghanistan, this had proved a contentious and costly war for the Soviets.
In 1988 Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would no longer follow the Brezhnev doctrine. The Brezhnev doctrine was formulated in 1968 and was used as a justification to maintain Communist control over the Warsaw Pact countries. (This was used during the military termination of the Prague Spring in 1969.) Effectively Gorbachev gave Eastern European countries the right to pursue their own political agenda. This more than any other policy had a remarkably quick and significant effect, drastically changing the European political map. Starting with Poland, the Eastern European countries experienced generally peaceful democratic revolutions, with Pro Soviet Communist parties being replaced by other democratic parties. Most symbolically in 1989 the Berlin Wall was torn down allowing East and West Germany to reunite. In recognition of Gorbachev’s role in bringing an end to the cold war he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1990.
Despite praise from outside the Soviet Union, Gorbachev had many enemies within the Soviet Union. On the one hand the “Conservatives” were alarmed at what they saw as the break up of the old Soviet Union. They wished to maintain the military and political power of the old Soviet Union. On the other hand “modernisers” led by Boris Yeltsin felt there was need for even quicker change in making the transition to a market economy. In 1991 Gorbachev was placed under house arrest by conservative critics, this was known as the August Coup. After 3 days Gorbachev was released, but on returning to Moscow his power had inexorably shifted away into the hands of Yeltsin. The Soviet Union and Politburo had become effetively defunct and Gorbachev resigned as President in 1991.
Since 1991 Gorbachev has made abortive attempts to return to politics but has never been able to gain significant popular support. Since then he had devoted his attention to projects such as the “Gorbachev Foundation” and the Green Cross International. The Green Cross international is an environmental organisation dedicated to attempting to solve key environmental problems.
Raisa, the wife of Gorbachev died of Leukemia in 1999. They had one daughter Irina Gorbachev.

Maksim Gorky

Maksim Gorky (16(28).03.1868 - 18.06.1936) - Russian writer.

Maxim Gorky was born on 16 (28) March 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod. Maxim Gorky was his pen name and his real name was Alexei Maximovich Peshkov. When Gorky was 9 he became an orphan and his grandmother brought him up. He was depressed when she died and tried to commit a suicide in December 1887. Consequently Gorky journeyed through the country for five years and gathered impressions which he later described in his works.
Maxim Gorky worked as a pressman for different provincial newspapers and his pseudonym was Jehudiel Khlamida. From 1892 Alexei Peshkov started to use the pseudonym Gorky. At that time he worked in Tiflis for the newspaper The Caucasus. His first book “Essays and Stories” was completed in 1898 and this work was a great success. This was the beginning of his literary career. In his works Gorky described the problems, humiliations and relations among people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society.
Gorky had a good reputation and he supported the nascent Marxist social-democratic movement. As a result both a large number of “conscious” workers and intelligentsia appreciated him and Gorky became famous.
Maxim Gorky openly disapproved the Tsarist regime and was imprisoned many times. He supported a lot of revolutionists. In 1902 Gorky became acquainted with Lenin and after a while made friends with him. The same year he was elected an honorary Academician of Literature but Tsar Nicholas II annulled this title. Vladimir Korolenko and Anton Chekhov made a remonstrate against that decision and left the Academy.
In 1904 Maxim Gorky arrived in Nizhny Novgorod and tried to establish a theatre. Savva Morozov and Constantin Stanislavski supported him but the censorship banned all the plays and Gorky gave up his idea. Afterwards he began to give financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Between 1906 and 1913 Gorky spent time on the island of Capri because of problems with health and the repressive situation in Russia. In 1913 Gorky arrived in Russia and continued his work. Throughout the revolutionary period of 1917 Gorky’s politics was close to the Bolsheviks.
In 1921 Moura Budberg was employed by Gorky as a secretary. Afterwards she became his unofficial wife. The same year his friend Nikolay Gumilev was imprisoned and Gorky arrived in Moscow to release him from Lenin. When Gorky arrived Gumilev had already been killed. Two months later he went to Italy for health reason: he had tuberculosis.
According to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Maxim Gorky returned to the USSR because of financial difficulties. While in Sorrento Gorky had no money. In 1932 he returned to the Soviet Union. His return from Fascist Italy was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets. Consequently Gorky was awarded with the Order of Lenin and given a detached house and a cottage in the country. In addition to that the city of his birth was renamed in his honour.
In May 1934 his son Maxim Peshkov suddenly died. In June 1936 Maxim Gorky died. There are a lot of suppositions connected with the circumstances of his death. It is known that Stalin was among the people who carried the coffin of Gorky during the funeral.

Robert Graves

Robert Graves (24.07.1895 - 07.12.1985) - British poet.

Robert Graves was a prominent British poet, novelist and critic. He is the author of numerous books, mythological prose and works on the theory of myths. During his life he created more than 140 works, two of which became bestsellers. Graves was born in London in July 24, 1895.
As he was the son of a well-known Irish poet, he started writing at an early age. He received traditional education at Charterhouse boarding school for boys. After graduating from the secondary school he volunteered for the army. Later on he was seriously wounded during the First World War.
His first book of prose was published in 1929. It was called “Good-Bye to All That”. In this book he clearly depicted his frustration based on broken hopes and his main topic of the “lost generation”. For some time he lectured in Cairo and then he moved to Majorca (Spain), where many of his books were written.
One of his most influential works was the novel-parable “King Jesus” (1946). In this book, along with prominent theologians, R. Graves tried to reconstruct the events which were connected with the Son of God. Author’s deep, fundamental research in the fields of cults, religion and myths led to creation of “The White Goddess” book, published in 1946.
In 1960 for some time he lectured at the University of Oxford. His main topic was “Poetic Craft and Principles”. At the same time he was working on a series of subtle, witty and fine stories. Graves personally of all his works preferred poetry. Till the end of life he continued writing poems.
His last years were spent in Majorca, where he could rest from political and social events happening in Europe. There he fully dedicated his time to the art of literature. He developed his own original poetic style. His lyrics entered the golden fund of the 20th century poetry.
For the last ten years of his life R. Graves suffered from memory loss, which is why in 1975 he stopped his literary career. The British poet died in 1985 and was buried in a small coastal village in Spain.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (15.04.1452 - 02.05.1519) - Italian artist.

Leonardo da Vinci was a prominent Italian polymath, sculptor, artist, cartographer and writer. This man was ultimately talented in many fields: music, art, mathematics, geography, anatomy, literature. His paintings include “The Vitruvian Man” (1485), “The Last Supper” (1498), “Mona Lisa” (1503-1507), “ The Virgin and Child with St. Anne” (1510). Da Vinci was born on April the 15th, 1452, in the Tuscan hill town Vinci not far from Florence. He was the son of a prosperous notary Piero and a peasant woman Caterina. He was brought up by his father, who later married a rich and noble woman. This marriage was childless. That’s why Leonardo was taken away from his mother and brought up by da Vinci family.
His father married several times during his life and had twelve children all in all. He hoped that Leonardo will continue their family tradition, but the boy didn’t take any interest in law. Instead, he wanted to study the art of painting. In 1472, he was accepted by the guild of painters in Florence. One year later he drew his first painting - a landscape with a valley sketch. In 1481-82 he was hired by the governor of Milan to arrange court festivals and to do part-time engineering work. In his works da Vinci created a variety of options for the modern ideal city. He had an immense impact on the architecture of Italy. At that time Leonardo tried himself in various scientific fields and almost everywhere had success.
In 1517, he was invited to France as a court painter for the French king Francis I. As the French court tried actively to take up the culture of Italian Renaissance, da Vince was surrounded by owe and veneration. However, as the time showed this was more of an external show. In two years’ time the artist lost all his strength and got seriously ill. In May of 1519 he died in the castle near Amboise, France. Despite the short life, Leonardo da Vince managed to become a recognizable symbol of Renaissance and one of the most famous painters of all times. His works and manuscripts are priceless. They were published in full only in XIX-XX centuries. All his notes were supplemented by drawings and thorough explanation.

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali (11.05.1904 - 23.01.1989) - Spanish painter

Salvador Dali was an outstanding Spanish surrealist painter. Apart from painting he was involved in photography art, film making and lecturing. He shot several films and wrote several books during his life, including “An Andalusian Dog”, “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali”. He was considered to be a powerful and extraordinary public figure. Dali was born on May 11th, 1904, in Figueres, in a rather strange family. His mother was a fervent believer, while his father was an atheist. Although his father’s name was also Salvador, the boy was named so after his dead brother, which highly worried the painter. He wasn’t a diligent pupil at school, although drawing talent was there from his very childhood.
His pictures were on display in Figueres when he was only 14 years old. After the school he easily entered the Academy of Fine Arts. Studying there wasn’t his favourite pastime. The only reason why he stayed in Madrid was his desire to be closer to his comrades, among them Luis Bunuel, Federico Garcia Lorca. In 1924, he was expelled from the academy for misbehaving. A year later he reentered the academy but was again expelled, this time without the right to recover. By that time he’d already had his own exhibition, which was numerously visited by Picasso. In 1929, Dali shot his first surreal movie “An Andalusian Dog”. After that, he decided officially to become a surrealist.
The same year he met his lifelong muse - Gala Eluard. She can now be seen in many of his paintings. They were so much in love with each other that Gala left her husband to live with the beloved Dali in Cadaques in a small house without any facilities. She helped him to arrange several exhibitions in London, Barcelona, New York. At one of his London exhibitions he appeared in the suit of a diver. He enjoyed surprising the public and having lots of attention. After his trip to Italy, Dali considerably changed his style of drawing. At this stage he admired the works of Renaissance masters. As the war broke out, he moved to the USA, where he instantly gained success and recognition.
In 1942, he wrote an autobiographical book which was quickly sold out. In 1946, he met Alfred Hitchcock and they started working together. Some of his European comrades were rather jealous and occasionally wrote humiliating articles about him. In 1948, Dali returned to Spain and settled in Port Ligat. However, he sometimes travelled to France and the USA. More and more he was engaged with the idea of Catholicism. Religious motifs can be seen in his 1950s’ paintings. At the dawn of his life he took up photography and lecturing. In 1974, he donated a large sum of money to build the Dali Museum in Figueres, which shows fantastic architecture and is full of his art works. Dali died in 1989, just a few years later after Gala’s death.

Robert De Niro

Robert De Niro (born 17.08.1943) - American actor.

Over the course of nearly forty years, Robert De Niro has established himself as one of the most respected and iconic screen actors in history. This is a position he's achieved both through the relentless perfectionism of his approach to his work, and the ferocity with which he protects his private life. Apart from the very occasional tabloid snippet, we hear nothing about the man, only ever seeing him when he's playing someone else - which is, of course, exactly how he wants it to be.
Robert De Niro was born in New York, New York on August 17th, 1943. His ancestry - strangely, given his tight cinematic connection with the Mafia - is more Irish than Italian. His parents were both respected artists. His father, Robert Snr, was a painter, sculptor and poet, an abstract expressionist by style. His mother, Virginia Admiral was also a painter. The couple, who'd met as Hans Hoffman's Provincetown painting class, divorced when young Robert was only two, the boy being raised by his mother. Robert Snr continued with his art, Virginia eventually opened a typesetting and printing business. A biography, released in 2004 by John Baxter, claimed that Robert Sr was in fact gay and spent only a few months with Virginia before separating, later enjoying affairs with the poet Robert Duncan, as well as Tennessee Williams and Jackson Pollock. Robert Jr, as ever, would make no comment.
Despite the divorce, Robert still saw his father regularly, often being taken to the movies. On his return home, he'd act out the film he'd just seen, learning to imitate the great actors of the day (he later made his mother swear never to let the press know which ones). The house, something of an artistic refuge, was usually peopled by renowned painters, poets and critics.
Robert Jr caught the acting bug early, appearing as The Cowardly Lion in a local production of The Wizard Of Oz at the age of 10. So keen was he (even as a boy he was intensely focused) that, at 13, his mother, recognising his desire and ability, sent him to a progressive private school, New York's High School Of Music And Art. But Robert wasn't quite ready. He dropped out and spent his time roaming the streets of Little Italy with a no-mark street gang, picking up the nickname Bobby Milk for his deathly white complexion. His father openly disapproved of his new "friends" and the pair fell out, though the rift wasn't permanent. When De Niro's father took off for a couple of years in Paris only to slip into depression and destitution, it was Robert Jr, aged only 18, who flew over there to bring him home.
Robert Jr didn't stay off the rails for long, and soon threw himself back into laborious study. He attended the famous Stella Adler Conservatory and worked too under Lee Strasberg, learning the legendary Method. By the age of 16, he was touring in a production of Chekov's The Bear. Soon he was criss-crossing the South, performing Neil Simon-style comedies in dinner theatres, and would spend well over a decade honing his craft in theatre workshops and off-Broadway productions. In the meantime, he tried to break into the movies, promoting himself with his usual strict attention to detail. He'd arrive at auditions with photographs of himself in 25 different guises.
De Niro's first important break came through his relationship with the young director Brian De Palma. De Palma cast him in The Wedding Party - filmed in 1963 but not released till 1969, the same year De Niro made an appearance on Sesame Street - then, a few years later, in Greetings and Hi Mom!. The pair would reunite, as major players, with 1987's Oscar-winning The Untouchables. Now De Niro's career began to take off. He appeared, alongside Shelley Winters and Bruce Dern, as one of the notorious Barker gang, in Bloody Mama, then revealed the depth of his work ethic by paying his own passage to Italy to research a small role in The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.
1973 was the year De Niro broke. This saw his first collaboration with the man who'd mark his career more than anyone else - director Martin Scorsese. The movie was Mean Streets and De Niro shone as a dangerously irresponsible shyster and hooligan. But, perhaps even more importantly at the time, there was Bang The Drum Slowly, a remake of a 1956 Paul Newman movie, wherein De Niro plays Bruce Pearson, a major league baseball catcher struck down by Hodgkins Disease, who tries to make it through one final season. Having returned to the South with a tape-recorder, strenuously researching his part, his performance was startlingly good, showing a wide range and genuine sensitivity, and winning him a New York Film Critics Award.
Now De Niro entered his most extraordinary period of work, landing himself an exceptional series of roles (he's said that "The talent is in the choices"). First he played the young Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part 2, taking the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his efforts (he and Brando are the only actors to have both won Oscars for the same role). Then he was back with Scorsese as the unforgettable moralist vigilante Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. He played Monroe Stahr, the big-time Hollywood producer looking for love in The Last Tycoon, and starred in Bertolucci's sprawling epic 1900. There was a brief downturn as he and Scorsese attempted to recreate the old-time musical in New York, New York (De Niro learned the saxophone for the role), but he bounced back immediately as the morose and disciplined hero of Michael Cimino's magnificent The Deer Hunter. Having been Oscar-nominated for Taxi Driver and The Deer Hunter (he'd later also be nominated for Cape Fear and Awakenings), he finally took Best Actor for his depiction of the brutish, confused and all-too-human boxer Jake La Motta in Scorsese's Raging Bull, a role for which he famously put on 60 pounds.
Throughout the Eighties and Nineties, De Niro continued to enhance his reputation with a wild variety of classic movies. He was fantastic as Rupert Pupkin, the lunatic funnyman kidnapping Jerry Lewis in King Of Comedy, explosive as a baseball-bat-wielding Al Capone in The Untouchables, smooth and venomous as Louis Cyphre (surely not The Devil?) in Angel Heart. Then there were excellent oddities like The Mission, Terry Gilliam's Brazil and the ludicrously under-rated comedy Midnight Run ("I'll give you FIST-ophobia!"). And the great roles kept coming. He scored again with Scorsese in the monumental Goodfellas, as the menacing Max Cady in Cape Fear, and as the Joe Pesci-persecuted Ace Rothstein in Casino (though he did turn down the role of Jesus in Scorsese's Last Temptation Of Christ). He played samurai-like criminals in both Heat and Ronin, and made a touchingly confused and bereft monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
De Niro has been twice married, first in 1976 to actress and singer Diahnne Abbott. He adopted Drena, Abbott's daughter from a previous marriage, but the couple also had a son of their own - Raphael, named after the hotel in Rome where he was conceived. Drena is also an actress and appeared in the De Niro movies Showtime, Wag The Dog and City By The Sea. Robert and Diahnne were divorced in 1988 and, seven years later, De Niro had twin sons with his then-girlfriend, actress and restaurateur Toukie Smith. These boys, named Aaron and Julian, were born of a surrogate mother, via in vitro fecundation, with Smith later rather cruelly remarking that De Niro had been no more than "a sperm donor". In 1997, De Niro was married once more, this time to ex-flight attendant Grace Hightower, with whom he had a further son, Elliot. It would be a tempestuous marriage, with the couple filing for divorce in 1999, and again in 2001 when they also began a bitter custody battle over Elliot.
Thankfully, the relationship would calm over time and they'd renew their vows in 2004. Other celebrity girlfriends have included Naomi Campbell and Ashley Judd but, as mentioned, De Niro keeps his private life deadly quiet.
De Niro ended the Nineties with Flawless and a superb performance as a super-conservative security guard who suffers a stroke and has to endure speech therapy with a transvestite, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. And the new millennium brought even greater success. He made a comically ferocious Fearless Leader in The Adventures of Rocky And Bullwinkle. He was merciless (as well as an alcoholic racist) in training Cuba Gooding Jr to be the first African American navy diver in Men Of Honour. Then he was hilarious in Meet The Parents (for which he was Golden Globe-nominated) , playing Jack Byrnes, formerly a psychological profiler for the CIA, who takes a mighty disliking to his daughter's boyfriend (Ben Stiller as Gaylord Focker). Desperate to catch Stiller out, he's a picture of suspicion and repressed rage ("I will take you down to China-town").
After this came 15 Minutes where he played a celebrity-hungry New York homicide cop chasing Eastern European killers who video their crimes in the belief that they can sell the tapes to TV and become rich and notorious - their main trarget being De Niro himself. In a couple of scenes, he even took the opportunity to parody his earlier starring role in Taxi Driver, most notably when he's practising a marriage proposition in the mirror. Next came The Score, where he played old-hand thief Nick Wells who's persuaded into one last job by Montreal crime lord Marlon Brando. It was a fraught production, with Brando refusing to wear trousers so director Frank Oz had to shoot him from the waist up, then refusing to attend at all if Oz was behind the camera. Eventually, De Niro himself took to directing Brando's scenes.
2002 brought a rush of activity. First came Showtime, yet another comedy. This was a spoof of buddy-cop movies, where tough veteran De Niro is paired with maverick, big-mouthed rookie Eddie Murphy on a reality-based TV cop show. The show's producer was played by Rene Russo, who'd also starred with De Niro in The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle. Next came City By The Sea where he played a cop tortured by the fact that his own father was a child-killer. Now his son, a drug addict, has accidentally killed a dealer and De Niro is assigned to the case. Unsure of his son's guilt and with his integrity thus under attack, he finds his past and present combining to make life unbearable. Following this, there be a return to an earlier hit with Analyze That. Here his neurotic mob boss would be released from Sing Sing into the house custody of Billy Crystal and his reluctant wife Lisa Kudrow. Naturally, strife enters their harmonic lives, with Crystal being drawn into a heist plot and De Niro having to combat a rival gang, led by Cathy Moriarty (earlier his wife in Raging Bull). Though brightly played, the movie came nowhere near replicating the success of the original.
2004 would be another big year. Having in 2003 been diagnosed with prostate cancer, from which he made a full recovery after surgery, he moved on to Godsend, which would see him playing a doctor who persuades recently bereaved Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos to let him implant one of their dead son's cells into her womb so they can have the same child all over again - things beginning to get weird when the new boy reaches the age when the first one died. The movie was based on an interesting premise but was badly executed, something of an embarrassment for De Niro who had only signed on to play a cameo, then was persuaded to stay on for an extra week's filming - a situation that allowed him to be promoted as the film's star. He'd make amends with the huge success of Meet The Fockers, the sequel to Meet The Parents, where his crazily suspicious and uptight Jack Byrnes would travel to Florida to visit Ben Stiller's impossibly liberated parents, Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand. Though a simple retread of the original, Meet The Fockers would suprprise many with its outrageous popularity, breaking Christmas and New Year records at the US box office.
Also released (though only in Spain) at the end of 2004, was The Bridge Of San Luis Rey, based on the novel by Thornton Wilder and concerning religious intrigue in Spanish-held Peru. Here a bridge has collapsed, people have died and priest Gabriel Byrne has written a paper on the lives of the dead to discover whether they all deserved such punishment from God. Of course, it's bang out of order to so question the actions of the Almighty, so Byrne is put on trial for his life by archbishop and grand inquisitor De Niro. It was a seriously artistic venture, with a cast featuring Kathy Bates, Geraldine Chaplin, F. Murray Abraham and, co-starring with De Niro for the first time since Copland, his old sparring buddy Harvey Keitel.
2005 would bring an oddity, Hide And Seek, a very rare horror outing for De Niro. Here he'd play a noted psychologist who cannot reach his young daughter, Dakota Fanning, when her mother dies. He seeks help from colleague Famke Janssen but nothing, it seems can prevent the girl descending into a madness that sees her obeying the evil commands of her imaginary friend. It was hoped that this would be followed by The Good Shepherd, De Niro's second attempt at directing (his first was A Bronx Tale back in 1993), which would cover 40 years of the CIA. In production for 10 years, the project had undergone terrible delays, the last of which saw De Niro's former co-star Leonardo DiCaprio drop out.
De Niro's earnings are now vast, having received $20 million for Analyze That. He runs his own production company, TriBeCa, producing such movies as About A Boy, Entropy, Witness to The Mob, Panther and Thunderheart, as well as acting as executive producer on many of the movies in which he's starred. Attempting to put something back into New York post-9/11 he organised the first annual TriBeCa film festival in 2002, then applied to build a $150 million movie studio on the site of the Brooklyn Navy Yard (he was turned down in favour of property developers). He's also a restaurateur, co-owning the likes of Nobu and Layla in New York, Ago in West Hollywood and Rubicon in San Francisco, the last of which he co-owns with Robin Williams and Francis Ford Coppola. His favourite though is his TriBeCa Grill, in New York, which he frequently patronises and on the walls of which hang paintings by his father.
In 1998, De Niro was caught up in an investigation into prostitution in Paris, where he was filming Ronin. Outraged, he denied any involvement in the matter and swore never again to return to France. Nonetheless, he is revered all over Europe and even received a Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival, in honour of his outstanding contribution to cinema. Rest assured that worldwide respect for him will only grow stronger.

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (1660 - 24.04.1731) - English writer.

Daniel Defoe (nee Daniel Foe) was born around 1659-1660 in Cripplegate, which is near London. He was a prominent English writer, essayist, pamphleteer, trader and spy. He became well-known after his novel “Robinson Crusoe”. He was also the founder of economic journalism in the UK. His father was a tradesman, but he wanted his son to become a pastor. Thus, he sent Daniel to the seminary in Newington Green. The boy studied classical literature, as well as Latin and Greek there. However, he drew a completely different path - business and trade.
He was rather ambitious by nature and he could afford to buy a real estate or even a ship, but he was often trapped in debts. However, business was not the only interest of Defo. He lived a bright and busy life. He actively participated in political life of England and was one of the rebels against King James II Stuart. For that reason, he had to hide in different cities to avoid jail. In 1684 he married a daughter of a successful merchant. Nobody believed that his marriage with Mary Tuffley would last, but they actually lived together for 50 years and produced eight children.
His literary career began with pamphlets and satirical poems. His first remarkable publication was “An Essay upon Projects”. In 1701 he wrote a pamphlet “The True-Born Englishman”, in which he ridiculed the aristocracy. Although he gained incredible popularity, he was sentenced to the pillory and giant fine by the authorities. At that time he also lost his business. His imprisonment could be very long if he wasn’t rescued by Robert Harley, who was the speaker of the House of Lords. Since then, the writer became a secret agent who collected all the necessary information in England and Scotland for Harley.
In 1704 he was hired as an editor of articles for the periodical “Review”. Being a journalist, he found time to write literary works. In 1719 his book “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” was released. This work was included in the treasury of world literature and brought its author instant success. The same year, he wrote “The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe”, and a year later another sequel story. However, the glory of his first book about Robinson Crusoe was unattainable. Defo died in April, 1731, London.

Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp (09.06.1963) - American actor.

Johnny Depp is a famous American actor, film director, screenwriter and a musician. He is well-known by his roles in the films “Pirates of the Caribbean”, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”. In 2012, with the income of 75 million dollars per year, he was considered to be the highest paid actor in the world. He was born on June 9th, 1963 in Kentucky, USA. His father was a civil engineer and his mother was a waitress. The Depp family lived in Owensboro, but they often moved to other places. At last, they settled in Florida.
When Johnny was 12, his mother gave him a guitar as a present. This was the time when he started playing with various garage bands. He also started drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes at that age. Soon, his favourite grandfather died and his parents got divorced. These accidents had a negative impact on young Johnny’s mind.  He began using drugs and was expelled from school. At the age of 16, he left school and devoted himself to music. His other hobby was drawing. He was the author of his band’s album cover. He was also fond of literature, especially of books written by Jack Kerouac. This author’s works greatly influenced Johnny’s adolescent views.
When he was 20, he married the make-up artist Lori Anne Allison. She was the one who introduced him to Nicholas Cage. The actor was impressed by Johnny’s manners and he helped him to get a part in audition for the role in “A Nightmare on Elm Street” film. It was his first acting experience. At the same, he still hoped to devote most of his time to music. Unfortunately, the amateur band, where he played, soon collapsed. That’s why Depp agreed to participate in a series of TV shows. The “21 Jump Street” series turned him into a teenage girls’ idol, which he didn’t like at all. In 1990 he was invited to play a starring role in Tim Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands”. After this film he begins regular cooperation with Burton. He also met his second wife, Winona Ryder, during the filming.
His career quickly went uphill. He was invited to play the lead-roles in “Arizona Dream”, “Ed Wood”, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, etc. After the loud divorce with Winona Ryder in 1993, he starts dating the British supermodel Kate Moss. He’s dated several other famous actresses and models. At the moment he is relationship with and American actress Amber Heard and has two children with a French singer Vanessa Paradis. In 2007, he received his first “Golden Globe” award. He is considered to be one of the sexiest and most highly paid actors of modern cinema. He has millions of fans across the world.

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson (29.08.1958 - 25.06.2009) - American singer.

Michael Joseph Jackson was a famous American singer, dancer, song writer, choreographer, philanthropist and an entrepreneur. He won 15 Grammy Awards and hundreds of other prizes during his life. Michael Jackson was born on the 29th of August, 1958, in the state of Indiana. He was the eighth of ten children of Joseph and Katherine Jackson. His father was a former boxer and a guitarist at the local R&B band. Michael was known to have many troubles with his father, who regularly whipped him and verbally abused. As a child Michael was afraid to sleep alone in his own room as he had nightmares.
When he was only five, he was already a member of a family music band “Jackson Five”. He soon got the place of a lead singer. But working with his father wasn’t easy. He had to go through numerous humiliations. Each time he did something wrong, his father would severely punish him. First time he spoke up about his childhood humiliations in 1993 during The Oprah Winfrey Show. When Michael was ten, “The Jackson Five” band signed a contract with Motown Records. It was the time when they recorded the following hits: “I want you back”, “I’ll be there”, etc. In the mid-1970s the popularity of the band began to fall, while Michael’s solo career began to prosper. In 1977, he made his debut in the musical “The Wiz”. It was then that he started the long-term cooperation with a renowned producer and composer Quincy Jones.
In 1979, Michael released his solo album “Off the Wall”, which topped all the UK and US charts. Moreover, the singer got his first Grammy Award for the song “Do not Stop 'Til You Get Enough”. In 1982, he released the second album called “Thriller”, which brought him seven Grammy Awards. Seventy million copies of this album were sold worldwide. In spring of 1983, at the show of “Motown 25” for the first time he introduced his famous “moonwalk”, which became his signature dance walk. In 1987, the singer published his autobiography “Walking on the Moon”. In 1991, Jackson signed the largest contract with Sony Records and released his solo album “Dangerous”. He finally proved his status as the first star in the world of show business.
In 1993 the famous pop star was accused of sexual harassment by a thirteen-year-old boy. In December of the same year the singer was strip searched. One of his friends later said that Michael never recovered from this humiliation. He was always known for good attitude towards children, but this case caused irrecoverable damage to his reputation. One year later he married Elvis Presley’s daughter. Some saw it as an attempt to save his reputation, others found the fact that two great musical families united to be rather moving. In 2003, the singer released the album of his greatest hits called “Number Ones”. The great success was gained by “Thriller 25” released in 2008 to denote the 25th anniversary of the legendary album. The King of Pop accidentally died on June the 25th, 2009.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs (25.02.1955 - 05.10.2011) - American businessman and inventor.

Steve Jobs was born on 24 February 1955 in San Francisco. His full name was Steven Paul Jobs. Birth parents abandoned him and then Steve was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. Some years later his adoptive parents affiliated a daughter, Patti.
Paul was a mechanical engineer and worked for a corporation which produced lasers. Steve’s stepmother was a bookkeeper. She taught him to read at an early age and Paul showed Steve elementary electronics. Steve himself always insisted that Paul and Clara were his parents.
In 1972 Steve Jobs graduated from high school in California and became a college student at Reed College in Portland. He also attended lectures at the HP Company and then began to work there with his schoolfellow Steve Wozniak.
In 1976 Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne established Apple. Some years later Steve Wozniak created a new personal computer which carried Apple forward. Its name was Apple II. Steve Jobs worked on design and sales of new device.
In 1980s Xerox PARC introduced its product, mouse-driven graphical user interface. Steve Jobs predicted the success of Xerox PARC’s invention and this was an incitement to development of the Apple Lisa. The creators were Ken Rothmuller and John Couch. In addition to that Jef Raskin invented Macintosh in one year.
There was a race for power in Apple in 1985. Steve Jobs lost it and left the company. He decided to found a new corporation which was called NeXT. This company produced technologies for organizational markets and higher-education.
In 1986 Steve Jobs got the computer graphics branch of Lucasfilm Ltd. Later it was reorganized into Pixar Animation Studios. Steve worked on famous animated cartoon ‘Toy Story’ as an executive producer. He was controlling shareholder and his percentage was 50.1%. In 2006 The Walt Disney Company acquired Pixar Animation Studios and Steve became the stock owner and a member of its Board of Directors.
In 1996 NeXT was included in Apple. Consequently Steve returned to work for Apple and became its co-founder. Afterwards the NeXTSTEP codebase was used for the Mac OS X. In 1996 Steve Jobs was chosen as an advisor of Apple and interim CEO in 1997. In 2000 he became Chief Executive Officer of Apple. He supervised elaboration of the iMac, iPad, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and other company’s products.
On March 18, 1991 Steve married Laurene Powell. Married couple had son and two daughters. Jobs also was in a relationship with painter Chris Ann Brennan. Lisa Brennan-Jobs, their daughter, was born in 1978. She was Steve’s first child.
In 2003 Steve’s illness was diagnosed as a rare form of pancreatic cancer. He was cured of it. But in 2009 Steve sustained a liver transplantation. His health became worse. In August 2011 Steve Jobs resigned as Chief Executive Officer but he remained Chairman of the Board till his dying day. On October 5, 2011 he died.

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie (04.06.1975) - American Actress.

Angelina Jolie is a world famous actress, model and Goodwill Ambassador. She is considered to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. She was born on June 4th, 1975, in Los Angeles, in the family of actors. Her father is American and her mother was of French-Canadian origin. Her parents separated when she was little. Her father, Jon Voight, soon received an “Oscar”, while her mother had to take care of two children: Angelina and her brother James. She often watched movies with children and that awakened Angelina’s interest in acting.
Having great desire to act, she applied to the film school of Lee Strasberg. She studied there for two years. As a teenager she felt like an outsider. She had non-standard appearance, weird habits and second-hand clothes. She was rather thin, wore black clothes and dyed her hair red. Once she admitted that she did various drugs and led a reclusive life. She said she went through really hard times then and she is lucky to have survived them. At the age of 14, she became a model and she appeared in several music videos. Her first role didn’t bring her much popularity. She played a humanoid robot in a low-budget sci-fi thriller “Cyborg 2” (1993).
However, her next role in the “Hackers” was noted by critics. The actress gained high popularity after the biographical film “Gia” (1998). She played Gia Carangi, who was a popular top model in the 1970s. In 1999, she played the role of a rampant rebel Lisa Rowe and in “Girl, Interrupted”. This movie brought her several significant awards. In 2001, she starred in the first episode of “Lara Croft”. The film received lots of criticism. However, soon she got involved in the main project of her life - the movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” (2005). This comedy, where she played with Brad Pitt, unexpectedly collected 480 million dollars. In 2014, she starred in her highest - grossing film, Maleficent.
It was then that Angelina started secretly dating her film partner Brad Pitt. Prior to this relationship, she was married twice and divorced, while Pitt was married to Jennifer Aniston. Soon, everyone knew about their relationship and Brad Pitt got divorced. In 2011, Angelina has mastered another kind of activity - filmmaking. In 2012, the couple Jolie and Pitt finally announced their engagement. In 2014 they got married. In September 2016, Angelina began the divorce process. At the moment, they are raising six children, some of them are adopted.

Elton John

Elton John (25.03.1947) - British singer.

Elton John (nee Reginald Kenneth Dwight) is a popular British rock singer, composer and a pianist. He is the holder of numerous titles and awards. Among them, six Grammy Awards, a Disney Legend award, the Kennedy Center Honors, a Commander of the Order of the British Empire title, and many other honors. He has had a great influence on the development of easy rock.
Apart from being a well-known musician, he is also a famous public figure. Since 1980s he is seriously involved in the fight against AIDS. Elton John was born on March 25th, 1947, in the London Borough of Harrow. His father was a squadron commander. His parents divorced when he was 15 and his mother remarried another man, who turned out to be a more supportive and caring figure than his real father.
Elton began playing the piano at the age of four. He was able to play any melody as a child. When he was 11, he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied for the six following years. In 1960, together with his friends he arranged a band “The Corvettes”. They were playing the music of Ray Charles and Jim Reeves. By the mid-1960s they toured the United States. They didn’t have much luck in the field of music at that time, but soon he recorded his first song with Bernie Taupin, called “Scarecrow”. Together, they started composing songs for other performers. Although, they didn’t have commercial success, they had lots of positive feedback in the US. In 1970 Dwight, who had changed his name by that time, released the album “Elton John”. The formula of success was found.
He began touring the United States with his concerts. His repertoire had everything to offer: heartfelt ballads, rock songs, etc. In 1973, he created his own label Rocket Records and released another pop-album “Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player”. Even more successful was his next album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”. A year later there was another album “Caribou”, which won the first place in the US. He achieved commercial success in 1976, when he sang a duet with Kiki Dee. His single “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” topped all the UK and US charts. After instant success, he confessed his bisexuality to the magazine “Rolling Stones”. He’s had several relationships during his life, but at the moment he is married to David Furnish and the couple has one son from a surrogate mother.

Leonardo Dicaprio

Leonardo Dicaprio (born 11.11.1974) - American actor.

He was born Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio on the 11th of November, 1974, in Hollywood, to Italian-American comic distributor George DiCaprio and his German-American wife Irmalin, a legal secretary who'd go on to become Leonardo's manager. The boy's unusual name was chosen when he kicked his pregnant mother from the inside while she was viewing a Da Vinci in the Uffizi, the Wilhelm coming from a German relative - and not some dubious tribute to the Kaiser.
George and Irmalin would divorce the year after Leonardo's birth but, the split being amicable, the pair would both be involved in the child's rearing. Hence young Leo would enjoy a peculiarly bohemian upbringing (not unlike Winona Ryder's). George being a prime mover in the comic underground of the Sixties and Seventies, visitors to the family home included Robert Crumb, Charles Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr. The family would knock up outrageous costumes and attend numerous Californian festivals, one of Leo's earliest memories being of tap-dancing onstage in front of an audience of thousands - his stage fright thus being eliminated at a very early age.
A bright kid, Leo attended the Seeds University Elementary School at UCLA, an hour's drive from the seedy, drug-infested Echo Park area where he lived - it was a mark of Irmalin's dedication to her son that she'd spend 4 hours a day flitting to and fro. He'd then move on to the Los Angeles Centre for Enriched Studies, a school for gifted children, and then John Marshall High School in the Los Feliz area of LA. He wasn't good in class, finding it hard to focus on academic studies. Indeed, he'd take to cribbing off his peers' papers and become known as Leonardo Retardo. Instead, he concentrated on breakdancing for his peers at lunchtime, and playing practical jokes on the neighbours. The future heart-throb wasn't much cop in matters of the heart either. Taking one Cecilia Garcia to see the appropriately romantic When Harry Met Sally, he kissed her and was summarily dumped.
With both parents taking him to auditions, he now went for "proper" acting parts and, proving the foolishness of one agent's efforts to change his name to a supposedly more US-friendly Lenny Williams, he quickly rose through the ranks. He won a part in Santa Barbara, a post-Dallas soap featuring a young Robin Wright, and played a friend of the family McCullough, owners of the latest reincarnation of Lassie. He also had a fight with Heather McComb in the TV spin-off from Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders, which featured Michael Madsen and Billy Bob Thornton, as well as a very young David Arquette.
The same year that brought The Outsiders (1990) would see Leonardo win his first regular part. This was in another TV spin-off, this time a take on Ron Howard's big comedy hit Parenthood, the series being written by Joss "Buffy" Whedon. One strand of the movie's multi-faceted story had seen Joaquin Phoenix as the son of Dianne Wiest, a troubled boy who's befriended by his rebellious sister's drag-racing boyfriend, Keanu Reeves. Here the parts were taken by Leo, Maryedith Burrell and David Arquette respectively. Sadly, the show would not replicate its parent's success, lasting for only three episodes.
After briefly popping up as one of Darlene's classmates in Roseanne, Leonardo now made his Silver Screen debut. As is the case with so many modern stars, this was in a thoroughly dodgy horror flick - Critters 3. The original Critters was a knowing and reasonably racy Gremlins rip-off, directed by Stephen Herek, who'd go on to classier fare like 101 Dalmatians and Mr Holland's Opus. By Critters 3, the notion of small, furry, man-munching aliens had grown a tad tired, despite the excellent tag-line "You are what they eat". Nevertheless, the cast made a good fist of it, Leo standing out as a lonely kid who struggles to keep his new friends while his landlord dad is busy evicting them from their apartment block. Oh, forgot to mention the infestation of fuzzy carnivores and the numerous sudden deaths.
Now came a real break. Growing Pains, a sweet comedy series inspired by the success of Family Ties, saw a psychologist and a journalist raising their 4 kids on Long Island. Leonardo would win a recurring role as Luke Brower, a homeless kid taken in by the kind-hearted Seavers clan. This would lead to a brief appearance in Poison Ivy, where Drew Barrymore really kicked off her comeback as a nutty Lolita terrorising poor Tom Skerritt.
Growing Pains, Parenthood and Santa Barbara had all seen Leo nominated for a Young Artist Award, and his class was confirmed when he beat 400 hopefuls to the role of Toby in This Boy's Life. Here Ellen Barkin played Toby's mother, a divorcee who, fearing that her son is going off the rails, settles in Seattle and takes up with Robert De Niro, a straight-up mechanic who's seemingly the nice guy she's been seeking. Toby, on the other hand, recognises De Niro as the phoney, drunken bully he really is and engages in an ongoing confrontation with him, with De Niro often screaming "Shut your pie-hole!" - Barkin being so keen to maintain her new marriage that she stays on the sidelines.
Going the full 15 with De Niro would be a challenge for any actor. That DiCaprio pulled it off while still a teenager is testament to his innate abilities. This Boy's Life saw him recognised as an outstanding new talent, and both the New York Critics and the National Society of Critics made him their second-best supporting actor that year. The movie also saw him working for the first time with Tobey Maguire, a close friend he met at the auditions for Parenthood. Once fame had arrived, Maguire would become a mainstay of DiCaprio's Pussy Posse, a drinking gang featuring the likes of actor Ethan Suplee and Jonah Johnson (Leo's assistant on Titanic).
Leonardo would work with Maguire again soon after This Boy's Life. At least, it was legally claimed that he did. What certainly happened was that the 2 actors, along with Amber Benson and several others, were filmed in a bar, flirting, joking, and discussing drink, drugs and love. It was a raw affair with no one seeming to like each other very much, and according to DiCaprio and Maguire, it was just an acting exercise. Then, in 1998, after DiCaprio's Titanic success and Maguire's first steps into the big-time, the footage was released, put together as a feature named Don's Plum. Leo and Tobey sued to prevent its release, claiming they had received an agreement that it would never be released as a feature. Co-producer David Stutman sued them back for - amongst other things - trying to stop him making a living. Eventually a secret agreement was reached. Money changed hands, and it was agreed that Don's Plum would never be commercially released in Canada or the USA.
At this stage, Leo could have gone blockbuster, being offered the part of Robin in one of Jones's next projects, Batman Forever. Instead, he chose a series of far more interesting roles, confirming his artistic ambitions. First there was a bit part in Agnes Varda's tribute to film, The Hundred And One Nights Of Simon Cinema, which saw him alongside Mastroianni, Depardieu, Delon, Deneuve, Schygulla, and Lollobrigida, as well as Harrison Ford and his old pal De Niro, on one of the most impressive credit-lists of all time.
Next came Sam Raimi's western The Quick And The Dead, where Gene Hackman holds a gunslinging contest that he fully intends to win by killing his old crony, Hollywood newcomer Russell Crowe. Both Crowe and DiCaprio were both personally chosen by the film's star, Sharon Stone, who actually paid Leo out of her own wages. And she was well-rewarded, Leo standing out as Hackman's long-lost son who joins the contest to prove himself to his daddy, along the way muttering such self-laudatory soundbites as "DAMN, I'm fast!" and "Is it possible to improve on perfection?"
But 1995 wasn't all fun. In The Basketball Diaries, based on the true story of author Jim Carroll, he played a basketball star at a Catholic school who dabbles in drugs then hits the slippery slope to heroin, robbery and, eventually, prostitution (his former co-star Juliette Lewis excelled here as a scuzzy hooker). It was another superb performance in a hard-hitting drama. Indeed, it was so hard-hitting that in 1999 the video was recalled, due to a dream sequence where Leo dons a trenchcoat and blows away his teacher and classmates. Not only did this connect to the murderous activities of Colorado's Trenchcoat Mafia, but it was also alleged to have influenced 14-year-old Michael Corneal, who shot 3 classmates in Paducah, Kentucky.
With his father George seeking out the best scripts for his son, Leonardo now moved on to another controversial picture, Total Eclipse, directed by Agnieszka Holland, who'd won a Golden Globe in 1992 for her Europa, Europa. This saw Leo out-there again, this time as the tormented, bisexual teenage poet Arthur Rimbaud, learning from then seducing David Thewlis's Paul Verlaine. Crude, Dionysian and wholly obnoxious, he came on like a Jim Morrison of Yore - which is exactly what Rimbaud was.
DiCaprio's stock with critics was now exceptionally high. It was time to step into the mainstream, and this he did by taking the lead in Romeo And Juliet, updated and MTV-ified by Baz "Moulin Rouge!" Luhrmann. Keeping Shakespeare's original words, Luhrmann set the movie in modern-day Verona, seeing DiCaprio romance Claire Danes' Juliet amidst an out-and-out gang war between the Montagues and Capulets. It was flashy and fun, and it hit the teen market hard, making a heart-throb of the hitherto fairly arty Leo.
As if still striking against inevitable superstardom, Leo followed this up with the infinitely more low-key Marvin's Room, where Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton played estranged sisters drawn back together when Keaton is diagnosed with leukaemia and Meryl's son Hank (Leo), in an institution for burning down his mum's house, is a likely bone marrow donor. It was traumatic stuff, with De Niro popping up again as a geeky doctor. Leo would next appear briefly in David Blaine's Street Magic, the pair becoming friends for a while. Indeed, a notorious picture would circulate showing them, along with Tobey Maguire, clad in very loose kimonos and eating sushi. Arguments raged worldwide as to whether Leo could really be that, well, big.
Now everything changed. Turning down the part of Dirk Diggler in PT Anderson's Boogie Nights (a part for which it seemed Leo would not have needed prosthetic enhancement), he instead took the lead as Jack Dawson in James Cameron's Titanic. This was Cameron's doing, the director having battled hard against the studio who preferred Matthew McConaughey. Everyone knows the story, how poor Irish emigrant Dawson creeps up from the cheap seats to woo, sketch and seduce hoity-toity Kate Winslet, before dying in his successful attempt to save her in the freezing water after the ship goes down.
Costing $200 million, Titanic was a huge financial risk that paid off in grand fashion. Scooping 11 Oscars to equal Ben-Hur's record, it took a fantastic $1.8 billion worldwide, more than 3 times the take of Star Wars (including its re-release). And, of course, the movie sparked Leomania, a phenomenon so widespread that as late as 2001, 28 Kabul barbers were arrested by the Taliban for giving kids DiCaprio haircuts.
In the US, Titanic spent an incredible 15 weeks at Number One, with the first real challenge to its supremacy coming from Leo's next picture, The Man In The Iron Mask. Here he played dual roles, as the decadent and cruel young king, Louis XIV and his twin Philippe - a nice guy that musketeers Jeremy Irons, Gerard Depardieu and John Malkovich attempt to sneak onto the throne. The movie was fine fun, but not sturdy enough to dislodge Titanic. That honour would fall to the critically derided Lost In Space.
Leo, Golden Globe-nominated for Titanic, was now the biggest star in the world, and was shocked to find himself on magazine covers even when he hadn't done an interview. He was especially shocked to discover that Playgirl was planning to run a photo-spread, including a full-frontal nude shot. He immediately sued to stop it. But he couldn't stop everything. Having lived with his mother up to the release of Titanic in 1997, now he moved out and began to really party, the real and imagined shenanigans of the Pussy Posse filling tabloids all over. He was linked to supermodels Kristen Zang, Bridget Hall and Amber Valetta, eventually becoming engaged to Brazilian beauty Gisele Bundchen. Though they did not marry, indeed they'd split for a while in 2002, this would be the relationship that lasted.
On the work front, he cut right back. 1998 saw him play an horrifically spoiled movie star brat in Woody Allen's Celebrity, beating up girlfriend Gretchen Mol, trashing his hotel room and offering a spare groupie to hack Kenneth Branagh. But that was it for another 2 years, when he took the lead in Alex Garland's The Beach. Here he played a traveller seeking thrills as well as himself in Bangkok, and finding a map showing a paradise island that's supposedly the spiritual home of all wayward souls. Once there, he discovers a hippie commune led by benign(ish) dictator Tilda Swinton where he makes love, fights sharks and armed evictors, and eventually goes native in the jungle as the movie turns from The Blue Lagoon into Lord Of The Flies.
The film was not a success, but it did send Leo over the $20 million-a-movie mark. With financial security and time on his hands, he turned down the lead in American Psycho and signed up for Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York. Set in the mid-1860s, this saw DiCaprio as Amsterdam Vallon, a man seeking revenge for the death of his father at the hands of Daniel Day-Lewis's Bill The Butcher (a part originally intended for Robert De Niro). Both men have designs on pickpocket Cameron Diaz and both want blood as the Darwinian struggle between Anglo-Saxon natives and Irish immigrants explodes amidst the 1863 draft riots.
The beginning of 2003 would see Gangs Of New York joined in the charts by another Leo flick, Catch Me If You Can. This was originally to have been directed by Gore Verbinski, but he was forced to drop out when Leo was called to re-shoot love scenes with Cameron Diaz for Gangs%u2026 David Fincher, Cameron Crowe and Lasse "Gilbert Grape" Hallstrom were all approached, but turned it down, with executive producer Steven Spielberg finally taking over.
The movie was another true story, this time dealing with the career of Frank Abagnale Jr. Traumatised when his mother (the brilliant Natalie Baye) cheats on dad Christopher Walken, the youngster embarks on an outrageous succession of scams, posing as a lawyer, a doctor and a pilot, with absolutely no training at all. Breezy and amazingly charming, he thus wins wealth, status and women, while all the time being tracked by FBI agent Carl Hanratty, played by Tom Hanks (Hanks stepped in for James Gandolfini when the delays forced him back to The Sopranos).
In 2016, became the winner of the award "Oscar" in the nomination "Best male role" in the movie "The Revenant».
Despite his immense success, DiCaprio does not consider himself to simply be a movie star, describing himself also as an environmental activist. This extra-curricular activity seemed to begin when the makers of The Beach were accused by Thai officials of destroying the local eco-system, and it's something that Leo clearly takes very seriously. Not only did he interview President Clinton about ecological affairs, he wrote an article for Time Magazine, and became a patron of the Dian Fossey Fund, Fossey being the murdered activist portrayed by Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas In The Mist. Leo also has his own foundation, which won the prestigious Martin Litton Environmental Warrior Award for its passionate efforts. In 2003, he guest-edited the National Geographic Kids magazine, hoping to draw his younger fans towards the cause. The next year would see him campaigning for wannabe president John Kerry, making 20 speeches in 11 states, explaining how George Bush's government had damaged the environment.

Cameron Diaz

Cameron Diaz (born 30.08.1972) - American actress.

Cameron Diaz was born on the 30th of August, 1972, in San Diego, California. Her father, Emilio Diaz, was a second generation Cuban American and worked as a foreman for an oil company. Her mother, Billie, was an import/export broker of English, German and Native American descent (a complex blend of bloodlines that helps to explain Cameron's outrageous good looks). There was also an older sister, Chimene.
The family Diaz moved up the coast when Cameron was young. She attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School, former alumni including John Wayne (for one year) and Snoop Doggy Dogg. An eclectic mix, for sure, and probably not one of which the Duke would have approved. Co-incidentally, being as Cameron would go on to play the owner of an American football team in Any Given Sunday, Long Beach Poly has produced more NFL players than any other school in the nation. Also co-incidentally, part of The Insider, starring Al Pacino, Cameron's co-star in Any Given Sunday, was shot at the school (as were the classroom scenes in American Pie).
By the age of 16, tall, mature Cameron was already attending Hollywood parties, without her parents as chaperones - Los Angeles only being 55 minutes away on the light railway. At one, she found herself being pestered by seedy-looking men, each telling her he could turn her into a model (amazing, really, as she recalls "I looked hideous. I was wearing a jump-suit with heels"). One, though, stood out. He said he could get her a deal with the prestigious Elite modelling agency and she noted that his business card, unlike the others, did not feature "a nude girl in a champagne glass". Also, he seemed to have a fax number AND a surname. As it happened, he was Jeff Dunas, a genuine high-class photographer with real connections. Cameron consulted her family and called him back. Within a week she did indeed have a contract with Elite. Her first job was an advertorial for Teen magazine. She received $125.
Graduating from High School in 1990, she went to work in Japan. Such was her parents' trust in her that her sole companion was a 15-year-old fellow model. The pair shared a two-bedroom apartment. Four blocks away, Cameron was pleased to find, was a building containing seven nightclubs - she says she spent much time riding that elevator.
In Japan, aside from building a professional reputation, two important things happened. One, she allowed a photographer she'd worked with, a friend of her model friends, to take nude pictures of her. They were intended for her own portfolio and she thought nothing of it - until 1995, when the shots turned up in Celebrity Sleuth magazine, without Cameron's consent and much to her embarrassment. Two, she met video director Carlo de la Torre. This was love, big-time. When she returned to America, the pair moved in together. They'd remain a couple for five years.
So, still not 20, Cameron found herself jetting between exotic locations - Australia, Mexico, Morocco - modelling for fashion magazines and catalogues, appearing in adverts for the likes of Nivea, LA Gear, Calvin Klein, Levi's and Coca Cola. Her fees rose to $2000 a day. She was having a great time. Once, while making a Coke ad on Bondi Beach, she drank all manner of cocktails, then proceeded to a Japanese restaurant where she quaffed 30-year-old sake. The next day, suffering terribly, she recognised that she'd poisoned herself quite severely. She says she lost seven pounds in 24 hours. Where from is anyone's guess.
Then came The Mask, quite by accident (oh, it's enough to make you puke!). Cameron was visiting the office of the agent charged with getting her TV ads, and she noticed a script on the desk. She asked what it was and, when told, jokingly said she could do it easy. Taking her at her word, the agent set up an audition and, twelve auditions later, she had so convinced director Chuck Russell of her innate abilities that he lobbied for her, and she was in. And she was great, despite the problems of working with SFX AND the fact that - as she does before every movie - she suffered terrible stomach pains due to stress. Indeed, before The Mask, she had worried herself an ulcer. These days she relies on special breathing techniques to calm herself.
At the next year's ShoWest award ceremony, Diaz would be voted Female Star Of Tomorrow. But she was well aware of her lack of schooling. Immediately upon getting The Mask, she took acting lessons, and threw herself into a series of indie projects with ensemble casts - for experience's sake. Indeed, once she'd broken her wrist while practising martial arts for a part in Mortal Kombat (a part taken by Bridgette Wilson), and lost, to Gabrielle Anwar, a role in Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, ALL her next five movies were indies.
First came The Last Supper, where Diaz played one of a group of liberal students sharing a house in Iowa. Inadvertently killing a lunatic Bill Paxton, they decide that, each Sunday, they will invite one of the local right-wing crazies to supper, judge them Star Chamber-style, and whack 'em. It's funny and very, very black - Cameron fitting in well, despite the lack of Mask-type glamour. Next came the rom-com She's The One, written and directed by Edward Burns, then riding high on The Brothers McMullen and soon to appear in Saving Private Ryan and alongside De Niro in 15 Minutes. Here Cameron played a catty ex-hooker who messes up both Burns and his brother. She actually suggested her character's scenes be slightly rewritten to make her more likeable. Not so that audiences would like HER more, but so they'd better understand why the boys were falling for her. Burns agreed, and rewrote.
Next came Feeling Minnesota, where she played ex-stripper Freddie Clayton, who marries Vincent D'Onofrio in order to repay a debt but would rather be with his brother, Keanu Reeves. Going on the run with Reeves, she's pursued by private dick Dan Aykroyd. Importantly, while filming the movie, Diaz found she was staying in the same hotel as Matt Dillon, in town to shoot Beautiful Girls. The two met, but nothing happened - she was seeing co-star D'Onofrio at the time. Dillon said he'd call when he got back to New York. He didn't - not for a year, anyway.
Now came Head Above Water, another black comedy, where Diaz played the young wife of judge Harvey Keitel, meeting ex-lover Billy Zane and having to conceal his body after his sudden death. Then there was Keys To Tulsa, where Cameron played down the bill to Eric Stoltz, James Spader and Deborah Kara Unger in a tale of blackmail, double-cross and revenge.
Now, having moved to LA, she took off. Having hit big with Muriel's Wedding, director PJ Hogan took on a big-budget Hollywood rom-com in My Best Friend's Wedding. Here, journalists Dermot Mulroney and Julia Roberts have been friends for years. Now he's to marry cute, kind, incredibly rich Kimmy, played by Cameron. Roberts, naturally, now decides she's actually in love with Mulroney and, advised by gay buddy Rupert Everett, attempts to wreck the wedding and claim Mulroney as her own. Unfortunately, Diaz is SO nice, Roberts finds it increasingly hard to ruin her life.
My Best Friend's Wedding was a massive hit, and proved a turning-point in Julia Roberts' career. It also launched Cameron, whose naivety and decency were hilariously over-the-top (she's a natural comic). Many remember the scene where, set up for humiliation by Roberts, she has to sing Bacharach/David's I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself at a karaoke bar. She's terrible, unutterably awful, but her courage wins over the crowd, thus foiling the sneaky Roberts. This is one reason why real audiences take so readily to Cameron. Though clearly beautiful and exceptionally talented, she's not afraid to send herself up and to appear less than perfect.
Next came A Life Less Ordinary, where she was kidnapped by vengeful Ewan McGregor, and a cameo in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. But her next big step came in another comedy, this time There's Something About Mary, the latest from the Farrelly Brothers, creators of Kingpin and Dumb And Dumber. By now, Cameron had hooked up with Matt Dillon, managing to keep the relationship together even though he lived on the East Coast and she on the West. Strangely, the Farrellys didn't know this when casting their movie. Nevertheless, in they both were, Cameron as the eternal love of geeky Ben Stiller, Dillon as the private dick who's hired by Stiller to track her down, only to fall for her himself.
The film was a sensation, as was Diaz in it. How innocent she seemed, how genuinely perturbed by the legendary zipper scene ("We got a BLEEDER!"). How brilliantly unknowing she was in the restaurant with her sticky hair, in what has become tastefully known as "the gel scene". How great she was with the manipulative Dillon, immediately forgiving his enormous political incorrectness, like when he says of a group of mental patients "Those goofy bastards! They make me feel alive!" Superb stuff. She well deserved her first Golden Globe nomination.
Having learned her craft so quickly in that series of indie flicks, she'd got the taste for low-budget movies, and would now attempt to balance her career, where possible, between big and small. On the small side, she played puppeteer John Cusack's wife in Being John Malkovich, entering Malkovich's head and having sex with Catherine Keener (another Golden Globe nomination). She joined the star-studded female ensemble cast of the intertwining Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her, as a blind woman, then played a Seventies rebel who commits suicide, then has her secret life uncovered by her grieving sister, in The Invisible Circus. Apparently, she was beaten to the female lead in Waking The Dead by Jennifer Connolly, which just goes to show the implacable and uncompromising indieness of director Keith Gordon (you'll remember him as the supergeek owner of the killer car in Christine).
Beside these, she played the new football club owner, fighting for survival in a man's world, and threatening coach Al Pacino in Oliver Stone's aforementioned Any Given Sunday. She was the one truly huge star in the big screen version of Charlie's Angels. She was the voice of Princess Fiona, alongside Eddie Murphy in the mega-hit Shrek. Then she was the unhinged Julie Gianni, who sends lover Tom Cruise off the deep end in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky. She really just wants him for sex but can't bear it when he falls for Penelope Cruz. There's a horrible accident when she's driving, and it all goes haywire. Her performance won her a third Golden Globe nomination.
After this came Martin Scorsese's much-vaunted Gangs Of New York, a historical epic (possibly the last of its kind), following the battles between resident gangs and immigrating Irishmen in the Big Apple, back when it was only a small apple, in the mid-1800s (ongoing famine at home quickly driving millions of Irish into exile). Diaz played Leonardo DiCaprio's love interest, Jenny Everdeane. Actually, she played EVERYONE's love interest, forming part of a "love square" with DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis and Brendan Gleason. On a stormy set, Cameron took on a Henry Kissinger role, helping to keep hardcore arguments under control.
Beyond this, there was The Sweetest Thing, where she meets Mr Right and must learn how to win him. There was also two role reprisals. First, she re-became Natalie Cook in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, which saw her join her former co-star Julia Roberts in the $20 million club. Then she was Princess Fiona once more, in Shrek 2. If these perform as well as expected, they'll take Cameron's total of $100 million-plus movies to nine, in ten years. Quite incredible for someone who can't act, eh?
Just as incredibly, Cameron Diaz has still to marry. Her relationship with Matt Dillon ended in 1998, and she moved on to Jared Leto, star of Urban Legend, Girl, Interrupted and Fight Club. They got engaged. Of course, the tabloids had a field day, claiming that Cameron was going to dump him because, in researching his role as a junkie in Requiem For A Dream, he'd given up sex and then, to recover from his exertions, spent time in a monastery without telling her. When they did split, in 2001, it was said to be due to Leto's canoodling with Paris Hilton, the mad sod. But then they were reunited, with Leto then having to suffer inevitable rumours of a Diaz flirtation with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Having taken $12 million for Charlie's Angels, $15 million for The Sweetest Thing and a further $10 million for Shrek 2, as well as the Big One for Charlie's Angels 2, Cameron certainly doesn't need money, particularly as, being a big fan of fries and Egg McMuffins, she's so cheap to feed. Besides, she has her own restaurant, Bambu, down in Miami. One thing she'd LIKE, certainly, is more good parts, and you can bet she'll be scouring the works of her favourite authors, Raymond Carver and Charles Bukowski, to find material. In the meantime, she seems, pretty much, to have it all.

Diana

Diana (01.07.1961 - 31.08.1997) - Princess of Wales.

Diana (Diana Frances; née Spencer) was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales. Their two sons, Princes William and Harry, are second and third in line to the thrones of the United Kingdom and 15 other Commonwealth Realms.
Frances Spencer was born into the British aristocracy, the youngest daughter of Edward John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, later John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer, and his first wife, Frances Spencer, Viscountess Althorp (formerly the Honourable Frances Burke Roche). She was born at Park House, Sandringham in Norfolk, England. She was baptised at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham, by Rt. Rev. Percy Herbert (rector of the church and former Bishop of Norwich and Blackburn); her godparents included John Floyd (the chairman of Christie's).
During her parents' acrimonious divorce over Lady Althorp's adultery with wallpaper heir Peter Shand Kydd, Diana's mother took her two youngest children to live in an apartment in London's Knightsbridge, where Diana attended a local day school. That Christmas, the Spencer children went to celebrate with their father and he subsequently refused to allow them to return to London and their mother. Lady Althorp sued for custody of her children, but Lord Althorp's rank, aided by Lady Althorp's mother's testimony against her daughter during the trial, contributed to the court's decision to award custody of Diana and her brother to their father. On the death of her paternal grandfather, Albert Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer in 1975, Diana's father became the 8th Earl Spencer, at which time she became Lady Diana Spencer and moved from her childhood home at Park House to her family's sixteenth-century ancestral home of Althorp.
A year later, Lord Spencer married Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, the only daughter of romantic novelist Barbara Cartland, after being named as the "other party" in the Earl and Countess of Dartmouth's divorce. During this time Diana travelled up and down the country, living between her parents' homes - with her father at the Spencer seat in Northamptonshire, and with her mother, who had moved north west of Glasgow in Scotland. Diana, like her siblings, did not get along with her new stepmother.
On 31 August 1997 Diana died after a high speed car accident in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris along with Dodi Al-Fayed and their driver Henri Paul. Blood analysis shows that Henri Paul was illegally intoxicated while driving. Tests confirmed that original postmortem blood samples were from driver Henri Paul, and that he had three times the French legal limit of alcohol in his blood. Conspiracy theorists had claimed that Paul's blood samples were swapped with blood from someone else—who was drunk—and contended that the driver had not been drinking on the night Diana died. Their Mercedes-Benz S280 sedan crashed on the thirteenth pillar of the tunnel. The two-lane tunnel was built without metal barriers between the pillars, so a slight change in vehicle direction could easily result in a head-on collision with the tunnel pillar.
Fayed's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was closest to the point of impact and yet the only survivor of the crash; he was the only one to be wearing a seatbelt. Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were killed instantly, and Diana — unbelted in the back seat- slid forward during the impact and, having been violently thrown around the interior, "submarined" under the seat in front of her, suffering massive damage to her heart and subsequent internal bleeding.[citation needed] She was eventually, after considerable delay, transported by ambulance to the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital, but on the way to casualty went into cardiac arrest twice.[citation needed] Despite lengthy resuscitation attempts, including internal cardiac massage, she died at 4 a.m. local time. Her funeral on 6 September 1997 was broadcast and watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide.
The death of Diana has been the subject of widespread conspiracy theories, supported by Mohamed Al-Fayed, whose son died in the accident. Her former father in law, Prince Philip, seems to be at the heart of most of them but her ex husband has also been named, and was questioned by the Metropolitan Police in 2005. Some other theories have included claims that MI6 or the CIA were involved. Mossad involvement has also been suspected, and this theory has been supported on US television by the intelligence specialist barrister Michael Shrimpton. One particularly outlandish claim, appearing on the internet, has stated that the princess was battered to death in the back of the ambulance, by assassins disguised as paramedics. These were all rejected by French investigators and British officials, who claimed that the driver, Henri Paul, was drunk and on drugs. Blood tests later reported that Henri Paul was drunk at the time of the accident, although CCTV footage of Paul leaving the Ritz hotel with the princess and Dodi Fayed does not appear to depict a man in a drunken or incapable state. Nonetheless, in 2004 the authorities ordered an independent inquiry by Lord Stevens, a former chief of the Metropolitan Police, and he suggested that the case was "far more complex than any of us thought" and reported "new forensic evidence" and witnesses. The French authorities have also decided to reopen the case. Lord Stevens' report, Operation Paget, was published on December 14, 2006.
Within seconds of the crash, the paparazzi had surrounded the Mercedes, and proceeded to take pictures of the dying princess. Not one called for medical assistance. On 13 July 2006 Italian magazine Chi published photographs showing Diana in her "last moments" despite an unofficial blackout on such photographs being published. The photographs were taken minutes after the accident and show the Princess slumped in the back seat while a paramedic attempts to fit an oxygen mask over her face. The photographs were also published in other Italian and Spanish magazines and newspapers.
The editor of Chi defended his decision by saying he published the photographs for the "simple reason that they haven't been seen before" and that he felt the images do not disrespect the memory of the Princess. The British media publicly refused to publish the images, with the exception of the tabloid newspaper, The Sun, which printed the picture but with the face blacked out.
Fresh controversy arose over the issue of these photographs when it was disclosed that Britain's Channel 4 intended to broadcast them during a documentary to screen in June 2007
Diana was buried on 6 September 1997. The Prince of Wales, her sons, her mother, siblings, a close friend, and a clergyman were present. She wore a black long sleeved Catherine Walker dress. She had chosen that particular dress a few weeks before. She was buried with a set of rosary beads in her hands, a gift she received from Mother Teresa. Her grave is on an island in the grounds of Althorp Park, her family home.

Vin Diesel

Vin Diesel (born 18.07.1967) - American actor.

He was born Mark Vincent on the 18th of July, 1967, in New York City. Never knowing his biological father, he was told by his astrologer mother Delora (holder of a master's degree in psychology) that he had many different cultural roots - African-American, Italian and possibly Cuban, amongst others. "I've always had less information than I would like to have had", he said later. Matters of identity were further confused by his twin brother, Paul, now a film editor, being blonde with blue eyes.
Young Mark was raised, along with Paul and two younger siblings, in the Westbeth project in Greenwich Village, a government-funded block peopled only by artists. Here he received a major grounding in the imaginative arts, not least from his adoptive father, Irving, an actor and drama teacher.
The kids would go swimming down at the Carmine Street pool, and play hide and seek on the broken-down piers on the Hudson River. And they'd get involved in the project's various projects. Mark made his starring debut onstage when only 5. He wasn't supposed to be the star, he was supposed to be a horse in a kids' production of Cinderella. But Paul, cast as Prince Charming, suffered stage fright after the first act and Mark, never slow in coming forward, stepped into the lead role.
Financially, times were usually hard. "Nobody had money", recalls Vin "so there was this underlying resentment towards money". Consequently, people would make their own entertainment. At 12, Mark became involved in a Sunday night game of Dungeons & Dragons organised by a friend's mother. He became heavily involved in the game and was still buying paraphernalia over 20 years later, when role-playing had become his career as well as his hobby.
At school, Mark was troubled by an ongoing identity crisis, not fitting into any particular group. He'd find some relief, by fluke, at age 7. With friends, he'd broken into Manhattan's Theatre for the New City, intent upon vandalism and a few laughs. After busting and scrawling a little, they were messing around in the mezzanine when, suddenly, a heavyset woman appeared onstage, under a spotlight. Convinced she'd call the cops, the kids froze in horror. But, instead, she handed each of them a script and some money, with the words "If you guys want to play here, come every day at 4 o'clock. Here's $20 a week. Know your lines".
The woman was Crystal Field, artistic director of the theatre, and dedicated to developing artists from low income groups and minority communities. It was she who'd be directly responsible for Mark's future development. He did turn up every day at 4, and took to stage-life with glee. "That was the first time I was ever able to make a whole audience laugh", he later recalled "without getting sent to the Dean's office". Perhaps more importantly, he enjoyed slipping into character. "I found there was something refreshing about having my identity be crystal clear".
In the meantime, Mark picked up a penchant for extreme sports that would also serve him well later. Along with the other kids, he'd strap on his rollerblades and hang on to the fenders of the city's notorious taxi-cabs, often achieving speeds of over 50mph.
Like many men with a confused sense of self, Mark looked for confidence in body-building. Up until the age of 15, he was just a tall kid with a big Afro and a bigger mouth, seeking attention wherever he could find it. At 15, though, he began lifting weights and hanging with an older crew. "I've worked out for years", he explained later "For a long time it was my only sense of gratification". He began to go out clubbing, attending Studio 54 and, later, the Danceteria. And it was clubbing that gave him the connections to get his first job - at 17, as a bouncer. This would provide cash while he acted with Irving's repertory company and in off-Off-Broadway productions. It would also give him his stage name. It was traditional for bouncers to choose rock-hard monikers for themselves. Vin Diesel was as good as any.Hoping to make his acting education official, Vin now applied for an elite drama course at the State University of New York at New Paltz, north of the metropolis, near Poughkeepsie (the town immortalised by Gene Hackman's feet-picking line in The French Connection). He was turned down, the first of many set-backs. Instead, he enrolled at Hunter College in New York City, majoring in English, but he wouldn't see out the full course, preferring to spend his days acting on stage and on local TV, and his nights bouncing at the hip likes of Mars and The Tunnel. By the late Eighties, though, times had changed on the door. Gangsta culture had sprung up and now it was necessary for bouncers to wear bullet-proof vests. Where before his peers had been college guys, keen and able to talk art and philosophy, now Vin's bouncer-brothers were less intellectually inclined. After 9 years on the job, having seen one friend shot and another have his throat cut with a razor (he survived, thankfully), Vin would jack it in for good.
Ever ambitious, he decided that his future lay in Hollywood, so he took off for LA, telling everyone he'd return a star. It wouldn't be that easy. For a start, he later explained, his years as a bouncer had given him a measured confidence that worked against him at interviews and auditions. Physically intimidating, focused and intense, he inadvertently gave people the impression that, if he didn't get the part, someone was going to get hurt. No one reacted well to THAT.
Beyond this, that question of race was raised again. Vin was deemed too black to play Italian, too white to be a homeboy. Supporting himself by using his natural charm to sell light-bulbs and gardening implements over the phone, he struggled on for a while. But it proved to be no good. He returned to New York, not a star at all.
Back home, he lived with his mum and dad, building himself what he called "a hobbit hole" on the landing between the first and second floors. Realising that he would have launch himself, rather than rely on some lucky break, he spent his days immersing himself in cinema, studying the work of Clark Gable (he loves It Happened One Night), Marlon Brando and Sidney Poitier. He devoured all the new art movies, all the independents, too, gaining new confidence all the while. "If a Henry Jaglom film doesn't make you feel confident enough to make films", he joked later "I don't know what will".
Eventually, his mother stepped in with a little common-sense help. Presenting him with a copy of Rick Schmidt's book Feature Films At Used Car Prices, she set him on the path to self-help. With an idea for a short screenplay, he bought a word processor, wrote the piece inside 30 days, and took the WP back to the shop, it still being within the guaranteed return period. On a budget of $3000, Multi-Facial was shot in 3 days. In it, Vin starred as, well, as himself, really, playing a multi-ethnic actor who, deemed suitable for neither black nor white roles, tries a different ethnicity for each audition and fails every time.
Released in 1994, Multi-Facial was shown the next year at the Cannes Film Festival, causing something of a stir. On the strength of this, Vin returned to LA and, telemarketing once more, managed to raise $50,000 for his next effort, a study in misogyny called Strays, once more starring and directed by Vin himself. The movie was accepted by and shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997, but did not sell well. Vin returned to New York once more, wondering what the hell he had to do to make it.
Then, out of the blue, a call came through, a dream call from Steven Spielberg. Spielberg, impressed by a viewing of Multi-Facial, said he was writing a part for Vin in his next epic, to be titled Saving Private Ryan. Thus 1998 saw Vin employed in Tom Hanks' band of brothers (alongside fellow newcomers Barry Pepper and Giovanni Ribisi) as they crossed war-torn France in search of Matt Damon. It was a brief part, Private Adrian Caparzo being the first of the platoon to die, but it was an absurdly impressive big feature debut. Vin's second major role, too, was Multi-Facial-inspired. Director Brad Bird was also taken by Vin's performance and had him provide the voice for the titular monster in The Iron Giant, an animation based on a story by Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, co-starring Jennifer Aniston.
And it wasn't just Multi-Facial that was catching the eye of the industry's prime movers. Strays, too, had had an effect. Producer Ted Field had seen the movie at Sundance and made contact with Vin. He was particularly keen on Vin writing a screenplay based on his experiences as a bouncer. Vin, in turn, was interested in a movie Field was developing, a sci-fi thriller called Pitch Black. He hounded Field till allowed to audition - and thus won the part that would make his name.
Having been turned down by Joel Schumacher for the part of Robert De Niro's transvestite voice coach in Flawless due to his physique (as he said himself: "I have obviously spent my life celebrating masculinity"), having turned down a villain-role in Shaft, and having walked off the Ben Affleck-starring Reindeer Games due to his part not being enlarged as promised, Pitch Black more than made up for the disappointment. Here he was Richard B. Riddick, a condemned murderer being transported between planets and jails. Unfortunately, the space-craft is hit by a meteor storm and forced to crash-land on a planet previously colonised, but where all the inhabitants mysteriously disappeared during an eclipse. Another eclipse is coming and, being as they last for years, things are not looking good, especially when the survivors realise there are creatures here that live and feed in the dark.
It was a superior thriller, interesting in that it deliberately blurred the edges between good and evil, with none of the characters being obviously likeable. And Vin stood out, so much so that the script, which originally had him die in the finale, was changed to allow Riddick to appear in a sequel. This made all the pain of the shoot worthwhile. With Riddick having had his eyes polished and lasered in jail, Vin had to wear contact lenses that gave off a weird metallic glow. After the first day's shoot, lasting 14 hours, the lenses fused to his eyes, forcing the producers to fly in a specialist from a town three hours away - the shoot taking place in the Australian outback, where Mad Max had been filmed two decades before.
Despite the Reindeer Games fiasco, Vin now found himself starring alongside Ben Affleck (and Ribisi) in Boiler Room. Here Ribisi played a young hustler who gets drawn into a shady world of illegal brokers, led by Affleck, who's playing much the same character as Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glenn Ross. Diesel shone once more as one of the young stars of the firm. Drunk, violent and a bad, bad lad, he's nevertheless the only one with any honour. A complicated character, as all Diesel's characters would henceforth be.
Pitch Black and Boiler Room were released on the same day in 2000, immediately marking Vin as one to watch. Critic Roger Ebert noted his potential in his review of Boiler Room, saying "Diesel is interesting. Something will come of him".
How right he was. For a start, New Line, noticing the inroads made by Vin and by his Private Ryan co-star Barry Pepper with We Were Soldiers, released Knockaround Guys, a movie completed in 1999 and then shelved. Here several sons of Brooklyn mafia bosses attempt to recover a bag of money lost in a small Montana town. Vin put in another unusual performance. Though a tough guy and a fighter, his Taylor Reese also possesses a "wise sadness about human nature".
Knockaround Guys wasn't a hit, but it didn't need to be. By the time New Line released it, Vin had already carried his first mega-hit, The Fast And The Furious. Here Paul Walker played an undercover cop who infiltrates a street gang prone to stealing and racing flash cars at improbable speeds, trying to out-do rival gangs. Vin was Dominic Toretto, gang leader, who befriends Walker, thinking him to be a new kid on the block. Packed with super-stunts and concerning love and loyalty, it was like Point Break with cool motors.
And it was a monster. Taking $41 million in its first weekend, surpassing its $38 million budget immediately, it crushed the challenge of Dr Dolittle 2 to take the US Number One spot. Director Rob Cohen was quick to praise Diesel's input, telling the Toronto Sun: "He has the power and physicality but what I didn't know, when I cast him in The Fast And The Furious, (was) how deep he could take things and how a kind of charm emerges. In the past, action heroes have basically been killing machines who can make a joke. Vinny, on the other hand, has the courage to be overwhelmed and uncertain and sometimes to be almost nakedly needy". High praise for a guy who wasn't even in the lead role.
Now Vin was in the big league, and he knew it. Approached to play the lead in another SFX-fest, he went on holiday, telling his agents not to call him unless the producers offered $10 million. They did, and so he came to star in xXx. Here he was Xander Cage, a charismatic extreme sports obsessive who sells videos of himself performing outrageous stunts - one being where he steals a Corvette from a right-wing senator, and drives it off a cliff, making his escape by parachute. Recruited by government agent Samuel L. Jackson (who he might earlier have encountered in Shaft), he's ordered to gather information on a nihilist cell possibly plotting the downfall of everything. Of course, he hates the government, but loves the danger, and rather fancies his boss's girlfriend, played by the excellent Asia Argento. Again, he was a hero far more complicated than the norm.
It was a rough shoot, made rougher by the death of stunt-man Harry O'Connor, killed when he hit the pillar of a bridge in Prague. But xXx was another major hit and, with his name first above the credits for the first time, Diesel was made, his reputation boosted still further when xXx sold 5 million DVDs in its first week alone. He followed it with A Man Apart where he played a DEA agent who, having busted a cartel kingpin, finds his home attacked and his beloved wife killed, forcing him into a personal mission of revenge. It was mostly action, but the plotline did allow Diesel to exhibit grief for his lost spouse, an ooportunity he took with some aplomb, much as Mel Gibson had in Lethal Weapon.
As long suspected, his excellent performance in Pitch Black now led to a spin-off franchise, beginning with The Chronicles Of Riddick. Here he reprised his character - still cynical, still ambiguously heroic - now being chased by interstellar bounty hunters and battling undead cult the Necromongers on the scorched planet Crematoria. Delivering an ongoing explanation of the action would be Judi Dench, Diesel having seen her onstage in The Breath Of Life and demanded the producers secure her services.
After this, Diesel would attempt to widen his appeal with The Pacifier, an action comedy where he played a former Navy SEAL who fails to protect an endangered government scientist and tries to redeem himself by looking after the dead geek's kids.
The long-mooted xXx 2 would earn him $20 million plus a percentage of gross, shooting him up there next to Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford. Yet it wouldn't just be action, not for a guy this smart. After The Pacifier, Diesel would also plan to star beside Nicole Kidman in the musical Guys And Dolls, while his production company, the pointedly titled One Race, would develop a script from Ross Leckie's book, Hannibal.
Having spent years suffering professionally due to his multi-ethnic background, Diesel now found it a natural advantage. He could play Italian, black, even the great general of Carthage. Stats proved that his audience came from across the cultures - a very rare feat. Life was good in all areas. He was romantically connected with Fast And The Furious co-star Michelle Rodriguez, 18-year-old Czech model Pavla Hrbkova, and Playboy Playmate Summer Attice. Oddly, there was also Entertainment Tonight reporter Maria Menounos. Diesel had been quoted as saying that Xander Cage would be a James Bond for the next generation, and then met Menounos at an ET interview, just as Bond-star Pierce Brosnan had met his partner, Keely Shaye Smith.
Incredibly, he was even a hero in real life. In 2002, he pulled his motorbike over on Hollywood's highway 101 when he saw a car turn over and catch fire. He pulled the kids out from the back seat and managed to get the panicking driver to crawl out through the passenger side, saving them all from fiery death.
The Pitch Black and xXx franchises will keep Vin Diesel on top well into the 2000s. But expect the unexpected, too, from this most unusual of superstars.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (7.02.1812 – 9.06.1870) - English writer.

Charles Dickens was one of the greatest writers of his time. By many he is regarded as the best English novelist of the 19th century. The fictional characters that he invented are well known today. His best works included “Great Expectations”, “David Copperfield”. He was born on February 7th, 1812, in the family of a navy officer. They often moved from one place to another. Even when they settled in London, Charles attended the Baptist school in Chatham. By 1824 his father made numerous debts and Charles had to work at the Blacking Factory for six shillings a week. Soon, his grandmother died leaving him a solid pension. The boy got a place of a parliamentary reporter at the newspaper. At the same time he attended the Wellington College.
At the age of 15, he started working as a junior clerk at one law office. Three years later he became a reporter at the “Morning Chronicle”. This job was perfect for him and his works were quickly noticed by the reading public. From now on, literature was his main passion. His first essay was printed in 1836, but it wasn’t the call of success yet. Loud success expected him after “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”. With a slight touch of humor he depicted old England with its wide variety of sides. The next outstanding book was released in 1838. It was a story about Oliver Twist - an orphan boy who grew up in the slums of London. The writer’s fame and glory grew rapidly. Even in the young capitalist America, where he was in the early 1840s, he was greeted with utter enthusiasm. After returning to England he wrote a remarkable parody “Martin Chezlvita”.
In 1843, he worked on a beautiful story about Christmas traditions and ceremonies. After that he was appointed as a chief editor of “Daily News”. In the following years the novelist reached the heights of his fame, publishing “Dombey and Son”, “Little Dorrit” and other successful novels. By middle age he seemingly achieved everything one could ever wish for. However, all the riches he had didn’t bring him peace and happiness. Although the writer was married and had eight children, he had an affair with a well-known actress. Under the influence of his internal contradictions he wrote a social novel “Hard Times” (1854). His last book was full of gloomy thoughts and remained unfinished. Ch. Dickens died in June, 1870, at his home, after a stroke.

Walt Disney

Walt Disney (05.12.1901 - 15.12.1966) - American entrepreneur, cartoonist.

Walt Disney is the person who created the magical world of dreams for children. His heroes became legends, whereas he had changed the whole concept of film industry. According to some researchers he was the one who turned animation into true art. W. Disney was born in Chicago on December 5, 1901. However, he didn’t stay long in the “Windy City”. When he was five, his family moved to Missouri.
The future film director’s family was rather poor. As a child he used to work as a paperboy. At his teenage years he worked as a driver in the army. When he returned home he took up art as the main interest. As he always had a talent in drawing he managed to get a job at the advertising studio as an artist. At first, he created exclusive video advertising content. He was especially good at creating short sketches.
He soon fell in love with this new art form and started working day and night, experimenting with colors and techniques. These experiments led him to the world of hand-drawn animation. He had lots of creative plans, for example, together with his work buddy he set up a small studio. However, it soon went bankrupt due to poor finances and lack of proper experience. W. Disney was quite upset after this failure.
He gradually saved some amount of money, went to Los Angeles and together with his older brother set up the prominent Walt Disney Company, which at first functioned as a small animation studio. The first animated cartoon was released in 1924. It was “Alice’s Day at Sea”. The cartoon was followed by the whole series of other motion pictures about Lewis Carroll’s famous character Alice in Wonderland. This series didn’t have much success, but showed the publicity Disney’s distinct style.
The first successful picture was created together with his old friend Ub Iwerks. It was the cartoon about the Lucky Rabbit Oswald, which became very popular among American children. The next popular hero that Disney came up with was Mickey Mouse. This character is still used in films, advertising and various child campaigns. For creating this iconic character Walt received his first Oscar.
As the time passed, Disney’s empire became a real embodiment of cartoon art. Apart from creating colorful and exciting cartoons for kids, the film director had once decided to build a huge theme park, known as the “Disneyland” and found in many parts of our planet. He soon became a very rich man. Unfortunately, he died rather early at the age of 65. Walt suffered from excessive smoking which led to lung cancer.
After this Walt Disney Company decided to permanently exclude all cigarette images and smoking itself from the cartoons. During his lifetime the Walt was married only once and his marriage lasted till his last days. Together with Lillian Bounds they had two lovely daughters.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) - British writer.

Arthur Conan Doyle was a famous British writer best known by the series of books about Sherlock Holmes. At the same time he led a medical career and supported spiritualism. The author of subtle detective stories was born on May 22nd, 1859, in the family of Irish Catholics. He got his middle name in honor of his father’s uncle, who was a writer and painter. His mother, Mary Foley, was passionate about literature and books. She had a great talent of a narrator that Arthur inherited. The future writer had to grow in a strange family, as his father suffered from alcoholism and had psychological problems. They often experienced financial difficulties. When the boy was 9, some rich relatives offered to pay his education at a noble Jesuit college.
While studying, Arthur developed hatred of class and religious prejudice, as well as physical punishment. The only happy moment were connected with the encouraging letters he received from his mother. At school his favourite pastimes were cricket and storytelling. The classmates often gathered around him and spent hours listening to his fictional stories. In 1876, he graduated from college and returned to his native Edinburgh. At that time his father was in bad condition and had to be placed in a psychiatric hospital. Under the influence of Dr. Waller, who rented a room in their house, Arthur decided to pursue medical career and entered the University of Edinburgh. There, he met future writers R. L. Stevenson and J. Barrie. As a student, he tried his talent in literary field.
The first story that he wrote was “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley”. He created it under the influence of his favourite writers’ works. At that time he admired E. A. Poe and B. Harte. The same year he wrote “The American Tale” which was published in “London Society” journal. In 1880, he travelled and worked as a doctor on a ship’s board. This period of his life was later described in his autobiography. A year later he explored the western coastline of Africa working on a steamship’s board. In 1882, he opened the first medical cabinet in Portsmouth. In his free time he wrote detective stories. In 1885, he married Louise Hawkins. A year later, he seriously took up literature. Soon, he published “A Study in Scarlet” story, where for the first time he mentioned Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
In 1891, Doyle decided to quit his medical practice and concentrate on writing. The same year the magazine “Strand” asked him to write more detective stories about Sherlock Holmes. Starting from 1892 he travelled a lot with his family. At the same time he was working on the novel “Uncle Barnak”. In 1896, Arthur was again in England and he wrote his first theater play called “Sherlock Holmes”. In 1906, his wife died and he remarried the next year. With his new wife he had three more children. During the World War I, Doyle lost many friends and close relatives. In the early 1920s, he took up spiritualism and lectured this science in many countries. His last book “The Maracot Deep and Other Stories” was written in 1929. The writer died on July 7th, 1930 of a heart attack.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky (11.11.1821 - 09.02.1881) - Russian writer.

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was born on 11 November 1821 in Moscow. His father was a physician and worked at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. It was situated in Moscow. Mikhail was very cruel especially to serfs. Dostoevsky’s mother was very kind woman. Her image affected Fyodor’s mental vision deeply.
There were seven children in the family and Fyodor Dostoyevsky was the second. Their dwelling located in the Mariinsky Hospital grounds was not big. The district where the family lived was bad. The hospital was surrounded by a mental home, a cemetery and an orphanage.
The atmosphere in which the young writer lived had influence on him. Dostoyevsky felt compassion for the poor and dispirited. Afterwards it became apparent in his writings. Dostoyevsky’s parents prohibited him to communicate with patients but nevertheless he often strolled through the hospital garden and talked to them.
From the age of 9 young writer suffered occasionally from epilepsy. Supposedly it had an influence on description of some characters, such as Prince Myshkin and Smerdyakov.
Dostoyevsky studied at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Military Engineering. He learnt mathematics there though he scorned this subject. At the same time Dostoyevsky studied literature by foreign writers like Shakespeare, Victor Hugo and others. Though he didn’t like mathematics and was interested in other subjects he could pass all the exams and receive a commission.
German dramatist Friedrich Schiller exerted influence on Dostoyevsky and consequently two new romantic plays appeared: Boris Godunov and Mary Stuart. Dostoyevsky thought of himself as a “dreamer” in his youth.  It is known that Schiller was occasionally ridiculed by Dostoyevsky.
In 1843 he finished translation of Balzac's novel Eugenie Grandet and left the Engineering Academy. A year later he left the army and began to write his own fiction. Dostoyevsky’s first writing, Poor Folk, was printed in 1846. The short novel was a great success. As the saying goes, Russian writer and publisher, Nikolai Nekrasov, came to critic Vissarion Belinsky and said “A new Gogol arisen!” Belinsky and his supporters concurred. Soon this work was published in book form and Dostoyevsky became famous. He was 24 years old.
In 1846 Dostoyevsky wrote a story The Double. Some literary critics including Belinsky formed unfavourable opinion of this novella. Moreover a lot of his works after Poor Folk got discrepant reviews and some critics supposed that Nekrasov was wrong.
In 1863 Dostoyevsky tripped to western Europe and he was partial towards gambling there. At that time he made the acquaintance of Apollinaria Suslova, who was an image of his “proud woman” like Katerina Ivanovna in The Brothers Karamazov and in Crime and Punishment.
A year later Dostoyevsky was oppressed by death of his wife and then by death of his brother. He tried desperately to help his near relations and was deeply in debt. Dostoyevsky felt low and began to frequent gambling houses losing large sums of money. After a gambling spree he was in need of money and he had to complete Crime and Punishment on the run to obtain an advance from his publisher.
After these events Dostoyevsky decided to go to western Europe to escape creditors and gamble abroad. He met with Suslova again and tried to renew relations. Dostoyevsky wanted to marry her but she refused. He was heartbroken but then met Anna Grigorevna Snitkina who became his wife.
From 1873 to 1881 Dostoevsky printed a new monthly magazine, the Writer’s Diary. There were different stories and articles in it. The magazine was a great success.
It is also known that philosopher Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov exerted influence on Dostoevsky. It was apparent in the descriptions of the characters Alyosha and Ivan Karamazov. Dostoevsky spent the last years of his life at the resort of Staraya Russa in northwestern Russia. The great writer died in St. Petersburg on 9 February 1881 of a lung hemorrhage associated with emphysema and an epileptic seizure.

Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser (27.08.1871 - 28.12.1945) - American writer.

Theodore Dreiser was a famous American writer and social activist. He was born on August 1871 in Indiana and was the twelfth child in a family. Having brought up in severe poverty and strict religious atmosphere, he had a dreamy nature. It was hard for him to struggle for existence in cruel world. His parents were involved in wool-spinning business, but after a terrible fire they had to move to Terre-Haute city.
Theodore graduated from school in 1887. Then he entered the Indiana University, where he studied only for one year, because of financial problems. He took up the job of a clerk to survive. After a short while he decided to try his wit at journalism which was a good idea. For two years he worked as a reporter for several newspapers.
At the age of twenty-three he moved to New York where he established his own paper. Three years later he was invited to write for such magazines as “Cosmopolitan” “Metropolitan” etc. By 1932 he had a contract with “Paramount”. The film-making company wanted to stage his novel “Gennie Gerhardt”. In 1944 he was awarded a golden medal for remarkable achievements in the literary field.
Speaking about his childhood, it was well-depicted in his autobiographical book “Dawn”. In the field of literature he was known as the masterful artist, as his works were based on enormous amount of observation and experience. His art was the art of precision through images, documents and facts. T. Dreiser was often seen at meetings and public speeches. He was an active social activist.
In 1932 he participated in the global anti-war Congress, along with other outstanding authors. In 1938 he was sent to participate in the Parisian anti-war conference. During his lifetime the writer travelled a lot across the world. He visited Russia, Spain, England and many other countries. His most famous works include “Sister Carry”, “An American Tragedy”, and many other world-known novels. The writer died at the age of seventy-four in California, where he was buried.

Michael Douglas

Michael Douglas (born 29.09.1944) - American actor.

Born on September 25th, 1944, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Michael was, famously, the child of superstar Kirk Douglas. His parents were divorced when he was small, and he was raised by his mother, Diana Dill, and her new husband, in the East, far from Hollywood (he has one brother, Joel, and two half-brothers, Peter and Eric). Attending various prep schools (including Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, MA), he subsequently decided against the prestigious Yale in favour of the University of California, in Santa Barbara (a beautiful place where he still has a home). Yet, despite his distance from his natural father, the film industry intrigued him, drew him in, and after graduating as a Bachelor Of Arts in 1968, he scored some minor roles in even more minor movies, before rising to prominence as Karl Malden's maverick sidekick in the longrunning TV cop show The Streets Of San Francisco.
His first brush with massive success though came offscreen rather than on. His father had for some time owned the rights to Ken Kesey's humorous and harrowing One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, indeed he'd earlier starred in a stage version, but Michael somehow managed to persuade Kirk to let HIM try to get the film into production. After some years of effort, he finally pulled it off and, thanks to Milos Forman's sharp direction and Jack Nicholson's magnificent performance as McMurphy (a role many think he's still playing to this day), the resulting masterpiece snapped up five Oscars - one of which, for Best Picture, was presented to Michael. The film also featured Danny DeVito, for years a close friend of Michael's, who'd later play alongside him in The Jewel Of The Nile and direct him in The War Of The Roses.
The next movie he produced, 1979's The China Syndrome would prove to have a huge effect on Michael's later career. An excellent eco-thriller, concerning a nuclear accident, it coincided with the notorious "mistake" at Three Mile Island and consequently captured the public's imagination. Douglas would court such controversy and such currency over and over again - with the likes of The Star Chamber, Wall Street, Disclosure, Falling Down and Fatal Attraction, he'd constantly be digging into the most inflammatory of contemporary subject matters - rape, adultery, bisexuality, anti-social capitalism etc.
As an actor, though he did prove his all-round performing abilities in Richard Attenborough's disastrous A Chorus Line, Douglas spent most of the late Seventies and early Eighties in frenetic action pix, like Romancing The Stone, or twisted conspiracy thrillers like Coma and The Star Chamber. Then, in 1987, came Fatal Attraction and his career sky-rocketed. The reason was that the complex Douglas (a happily married sex symbol, a bigtime producer who sometimes acted, a an undeniable star still in his father's shadow) was absolutely perfect for the major roles coming his way. He was truly convincing as both a passionate cheat and a loving husband in Fatal Attraction, then as the "fair" but ferocious Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (for which he won another Oscar). Again he was great as a good cop led astray by desire in Basic Instinct, and really should have received another Oscar for Falling Down, where he was ludicrously good as a seemingly mild-mannered man, gradually revealed to be wholly disturbed. A troubled yet decent man, Douglas was always at his best when playing flawed characters in morally testing circumstances. Nowadays, he has another arrow in his acting quiver, namely an onscreen authority, an inherent, controlled strength that allows him to play men of political power - thus The American President and Traffic wherein he appears as the US anti-drug tsar.
Michael Douglas has been married twice. First to Diandra Luker, from whom he was divorced in 2000 after 23 years (she bore him a son, Cameron Morrell Douglas, in 1978). Then, to the delight of the tabloids, he wed Welsh actress Catherine Zeta Jones, who'd already given him a second son, Dylan Michael. He'd met Catherine at the Deauville Film Festival in France, in the summer of 1998. They got engaged in Aspen, Colorado on New Year's Eve, 1999. As well as busying himself as star and producer in Hollywood, Michael has also been named a Messenger Of Peace by the United Nations, his job being to use his position and influence to battle for human rights across the globe. More specifically, and as befits the producer and star of The China Syndrome, he must work towards total nuclear disarmament.
Though he'll never now reach the heroic cinematic stature of his father (they just don't make films like Spartacus any more), he is possessed of the kind of confused and often venomous emotion his dad exhibited in Lust For Life and The Vikings. In fact, he's an updated version - smoother, smarter, but equally imperfect, ideal for these weird times. Still one of the biggest stars of them all.

David Duchovny

David Duchovny (born 07.08.1960) - American actor.

He was born David William Duchovny on August 7th, 1960, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father was Brooklyn-born Amram Ducovny (a man who clearly has no need of extra Hs), a playwright who also worked as publicist for the American Jewish Committee. His mother, Margaret, was a Lutheran Scot, and a teacher. With that heritage, Duchovny jokes, you shouldn't ask him for money. He also says it gave him a "Protestant work ethic combined with Jewish guilt and introspection". He has an older brother, Daniel, and a younger sister, Laurie.
Amram and Margaret divorced when David was 11, Amram moving to Boston, then Paris where he worked on novels and plays (one being The Trials Of Lee Harvey Oswald). The kids stayed with their mother in New York, becoming ever more distant from their father. Life was not easy. According to David, mother would remind them constantly that poverty was only a small step away, thereby engendering a real fear of ending up in the gutter. David, fortunately, was exceptionally bright and, at 13, won a scholarship to New York's Collegiate, an elite private boys' school. Nicknamed Duke, sometimes Doggie, he found himself surrounded by the children of the rich and famous, including John F. Kennedy Jr, with whom he roomed on a school-trip to Washington in 1975. There were also many child prodigies, one of whom was already editor of the New York Times' crossword. David fitted in easily. He was brilliant at baseball and basketball, playing the latter to college scholarship standard, and studied diligently.
His work paid off. He was class valedictorian, and was offered places at Harvard, Yale, Browns and Princeton, choosing to attend the last of these. He made friends fast, and got a girlfriend. Seeing her on his first day, he discovered her name, and joined a politics class in which she'd enrolled. When she turned up (actually three months later), she asked to borrow his notes, he asked her out and they were together for the next four years. David was already fairly successful with women. He'd lost his virginity, he says, at 14, to a girl one year younger but a great deal more experienced. At 16, he'd had his own Mrs. Robinson, an older woman who'd seduced then discarded him. At that point, he was working as a janitor and had a small room with two single beds. He'd met a girl who was having trouble at home, offered her a place to stay and suddenly realised he was in love with her. They went out for a year. So, here's to you, Mrs Robinson.
David graduated from Princeton in 1982, with high honours, his senior thesis being The Schizophrenic Critique Of Pure Reason In (Samuel) Beckett's Early Novels. With a friend, he spent five months travelling in South-East Asia. On one occasion, he recalls, they smoked opium with an addict in Thailand. As they slipped into semi-unconsciousness, it began to rain, and pigs and horses came into the hut for shelter - David remembers believing he could understand what they were saying.
Next came Yale, Modern Literature and a teaching fellowship. One class, in Romantic Poetry, was taught by Harold Bloom - Duchovny remembers being impressed by one of Bloom's undergraduate students, the young Naomi Wolf. Then there was acting. Though firmly set on the path to an academic life, and having no acting experience other than appearing in one show for a student playwright, he still fell into it. David returned to New York one vacation, hoping to earn $2000 bar-tending. He did well too, rather scandalously giving people free drinks in return for big tips (he also admits to petty shoplifting in his early days - a refreshingly honest guy). Then a friend suggested he try auditioning for commercials. He did and, despite having smashed his front teeth when he fainted in a lift at age 17, he got a few call-backs, and then got an agent, who took him on on the understanding that he would take acting lessonsDuchovny says now that he's spent his life trying to recapture the thrill of sport - the astounding catches, the unworldly telepathic teamwork. Acting must have been a buzz. David commuted to New York more and more regularly, for classes and to work in off-Broadway shows until, realising he spent more time in New York than Yale (where he'd graduated and was now working on a doctorate), he decided to turn pro. At 27, very late, and surely another major buzz.
At first, Duchovny laboured in small roles in major productions. He played a party guest in Working Girl, starring Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith (joining him way down the cast were Kevin Spacey and Ricki Lake), and was Club Goer #3, alongside Rob Lowe and James Spader in Bad Influence. His breakthrough was to come via artier works. First, he was spotted by self-promoting maverick director Henry Jaglom, who cast him as an arch-seducer in his latest study of modern-day relationships, New Year's Day. Next, he found himself togged up in high heels and underwire bra, as tranvestite DEA agent Dennis/Denise Bryson in Twin Peaks. Then he was a group-sex freak with Mimi Rogers in the weird, apocalyptic The Rapture. He made dirty phone-love in the minimalist comedy drama Julia Has Two Lovers, then went back to Jaglom for Venice, Venice. There were more small roles in big movies. He was Officer Tippit in Ruby, the last and arguably least of a slew of JFK movies. He was a cameraman in Richard Attenborough's excellent Chaplin, and played alongside Bonnie Hunt in Beethoven, about a big, funny dog.
And he got to star in The Red Shoe Diaries. This was a made-for-cable film by Zalman King, the third part of a trilogy-of-sorts which began with the controversial Wild Orchid, starring Mickey Rourke. Here Duchovny played Jake Winters, a grieving widower who discovers his wife's diaries and finds she was having all manner of illicit rumpo. The film spawned many sequels, usually episodic, with Duchovny appearing in each as star or narrator; the premise being that Winters buys small ads asking women to send him their explicit diaries. Only this way, it seems, can he conquer his grief. This series, along with The Rapture and the fact that Duchovny liked to date beautiful women (including Lisa Loeb, Perrey Reeves and Sheryl Lee), probably contributed to rumours that he had to seek treatment for sex addiction. Untrue. Oh, there's also that famous photo of him naked, pouring tea, and holding his genitals in a teacup. When asked what his wife Tea Leoni thought of it, he replied: "First, I think she thought it was funny. Second, I think she thought I was an idiot for doing it. And finally, she's vowed never to drink out of that cup".
1993 changed everything. First there was Dominic Sena's excellent Kalifornia, where Duchovny played a writer on a road trip, visiting the scenes of mass murderers' crimes. One of his passengers is Brad Pitt, who turns out to be a killer himself. Then came producer Chris Carter. Planning a paranormal detective show, he needed an actor who could convincingly convey a belief in everything otherworldly. Duchovny, keen to advance his movie career, thought he'd try it. It couldn't, he reckoned, last more than 12 episodes, and it would get his name around. So, alongside Gillian Anderson's disbelieving Agent Scully, he became Fox "Spooky" Mulder. And, of course, The X-Files took off. Tapping in to New Age belief systems and pre-Millennial fears, as well as appealing to all lovers of Rod Serling, it dominated the ratings and made Duchovny and Anderson the biggest names on the fledgling Internet. Everyone wanted to know if Mulder and Scully were going to, you know, DO it. They didn't. Mulder watched porn, but only ever had sex with a vampire. Perhaps his replacement, Robert Patrick from T2, will fare better.
Duchovny stayed with The X-Files for seven years, being nominated for an Emmy twice, further boosting his reputation with a series of hilarious guest appearances on shows like The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live (which he hosted twice) and Space: Above And Beyond. There were also those now-legendary episodes of The Larry Sanders Show where, playing himself, he flirted outrageously with Garry Shandling - his nerve and timing winning him an American Comedy Award and another Emmy nomination). He also had a song written about him, by one Bree Sharp. Called "David Duchovny", it went "David Duchovny/ Why won't you love me?/ I'm cute and I'm cuddly/ I'm gonna kill Scully". The X-Files crew picked up on it and filmed an unofficial video with Brad Pitt and Whoopie Goldberg amongst those lip-synching along. Sharp actually got a record deal on the back of it.
Duchovny spent most of those seven years in Vancouver, where The X-Files were filmed - chosen for the rainy ambience (and the cheap labour). Once he got into trouble for complaining about the weather, causing an uproar in the Canadian media. Signs were put up, ordering him to go home. And eventually The X-Files set was shifted to Los Angeles, at his request. But this was so he could be with his new wife Tea Leoni, star of The Naked Truth, at their home in Malibu. David had met Leoni (also the product of a Manhattan private school, with an Ivy League education) some time before. They'd both auditioned for a spot on Jay Leno's Tonight Show. She got it, he knew she deserved it. Leoni was married, nothing happened. Then, with Leoni's marriage over, agent Risa Shapiro tried to hook the pair up. They didn't bite at first, but did meet once at a party to which Shapiro had cunningly invited them both. Duchovny arrived just as Leoni was leaving, but they said hi and, later, each asked Shapiro for the other's number. They married in 1997 and have one daughter, Madelaine West.
Due to The X-Files, David put his film career on hold, making only two more movies in the Nineties. In Playing God, he went right out of character as a disgraced speed-freak doctor who gets employed by gangsters. It was cool and nasty, and featured an early appearance by Angelina Jolie. Duchovny was at her audition and backed her for the part. And there was the X-Files movie which, to Duchovny's amusement, was slaughtered at the box-office by his wife's Deep Impact. He did pick up experience though, writing or co-writing several episodes of The X-Files, and directing a couple too. One he wrote and directed was Hollywood AD, where a movie is being made, based on Mulder and Scully's cases. Shandling plays Mulder, Leoni is Scully.
After seven seasons, Duchovny decided to return to cinema. He left the TV show on fairly amicable terms - amicable if you ignore the $25 million lawsuit he launched against the 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. He claimed that the studio had intentionally sold X-Files reruns and show-rights to their own subsidiaries at a low rate, so his percentage of the profits was kept artificially low. His re-entry into cinema was 2000's Return To Me, directed by Bonnie Hunt (his co-star in Beethoven), where he played a widower whose new girlfriend (Minnie Driver) turns out to have had a heart-transplant. With his dead wife's heart (I want to believe!)! He had tried out for the Batman role in Batman And Robin, but it went to George Clooney. Now comes Evolution, directed by Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) and, next, Ben Stiller's Zoolander.
Duchovny could just take it easy, lounge about with Leoni, indulge in sports (he loves basketball, baseball and swimming), listen to music (Rolling Stones, Black Crowes, Sly Stone, Seventies funk) or read (Norman Mailer, Elmore Leonard and Thomas Pynchon are among his favourites). He could simply marvel at his collection of hundreds of pairs of sneakers. But his ambition now is to write and direct. It would, after all, be a shame to waste an education and a comic talent like that.

Elizabeth II

Elizabeth II (born 21.04.1926) - Queen of United Kingdom.

Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary) is Queen of sixteen sovereign states, and their respective overseas territories and dependencies. She holds each crown and title equally; however, she is most directly involved with the United Kingdom, her oldest realm and the place of residence of the Royal Family.
Apart from the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II is also Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, where she is represented by Governors-General. The 16 countries of which she is Queen are known as Commonwealth Realms, and their combined population is 128 million.
Elizabeth became Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon upon the death of her father, George VI, on 6 February 1952. She is currently the third longest reigning British monarch after Victoria, who reigned for sixty-three years and George III, who reigned for fifty-nine years. As other colonies of the British Empire (now the Commonwealth of Nations) attained independence from the UK during her reign, she acceded to the newly created thrones as Queen of each respective realm so that throughout her 55 years on the throne she has been Monarch of 32 nations, half of which either subsequently adopted other royal houses or became republics.
She is presently one of only two people to be simultaneously head of state of more than one independent nation. The other is the President of France, who is ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. In practice, she personally exercises virtually no political executive power.
Elizabeth also holds the positions of Head of the Commonwealth, Lord High Admiral, Supreme Governor of the Church of England (styled Defender of the Faith), Lord of Mann, and Paramount Chief of Fiji. Following tradition, she is also styled Duke of Lancaster and Duke of Normandy. She is also Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of many of her realms.
Elizabeth was born at 17 Bruton Street, in Mayfair, London, on 21 April 1926. Her father was Prince Albert, Duke of York (the future King George VI) and her mother was the Duchess of York (born Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later Queen Elizabeth, and, after her daughter's accession to the throne, the Queen Mother).
She was baptised in the Music Room of Buckingham Palace by Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Archbishop of York. Her godparents were her paternal grandparents King George V and Queen Mary, the Princess Royal, the Duke of Connaught, her maternal grandfather the Earl of Strathmore, and Lady Elphinstone.
Elizabeth was named after her mother, while her two middle names are those of her paternal great-grandmother, Queen Alexandra, and grandmother, Queen Mary, respectively. As a child her close family knew her as "Lilibet". Her grandmother Queen Mary doted on her[citation needed] and George V found her very entertaining. At 10 years old, the young Princess was introduced to a preacher at Glamis Castle. As he left, he promised to send her a book. Elizabeth replied, "Not about God. I already know all about Him."
As a granddaughter of the British sovereign in the male line, she held the title of a British princess with the style Her Royal Highness. Her full style was Her Royal Highness
Princess Elizabeth of York. At the time of her birth, she was third in the line of succession to the throne, behind her uncle the Prince of Wales, and her father. Although her birth generated public interest, there was no reason at the time to believe that she would ever become queen, as it was widely assumed that the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) would marry and have children in due course.
However, Edward did not produce any legitimate heirs, and Elizabeth's parents had no sons (who would have taken precedence over her). Therefore, she would eventually have become queen whether Edward had abdicated or not, assuming she outlived both her father and her uncle.
Princess Elizabeth's only sibling was the late Princess Margaret, who was born in 1930. The two young princesses were educated at home, under the supervision of their mother. Their governess was Marion Crawford, better known as "Crawfie." She studied history with C. H. K. Marten, Provost of Eton, and also learned modern languages; she speaks French fluently. She was instructed in religion by the Archbishop of Canterbury and has remained a devout member of the Church of England, of which, as Queen, she is Supreme Governor.
When her father became King in 1936 upon the abdication of her uncle, King Edward VIII, she became Heiress Presumptive and was thenceforth known as Her Royal Highness The Princess Elizabeth. There was some demand in Wales for her to be created The Princess of Wales, but the King was advised that this was the title of the wife of the Prince of Wales, not a title in its own right. Some feel the King missed the opportunity to make an innovation in Royal practice by re-adopting King Henry VIII's idea, who proclaimed his eldest daughter, Lady Mary, Princess of Wales in her own right. However, the possibility, however remote, remained that her father could have a son, who would have been heir apparent, supplanting Elizabeth in the line of succession to the throne.
Elizabeth was thirteen years old when World War II broke out, and she and her younger sister, Princess Margaret, were evacuated to Windsor Castle, Berkshire. There was some suggestion that the two princesses be evacuated to Canada, to which their mother made the famous reply: "The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave." While at Windsor, Princess Elizabeth and her sister staged pantomimes at Christmas with the children of members of staff of the Royal Household. In 1940, Princess Elizabeth made her first radio broadcast during the BBC's Children's Hour, addressing other children who had been evacuated. When she was 13 years old, she first met her future husband Prince Philip. She fell in love with him and began writing to him when he was in the Royal Navy.
In 1945, Princess Elizabeth convinced her father that she should be allowed to contribute directly to the war effort. She joined the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service, where she was known as No 230873 Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor, and was trained as a driver. This training was the first time she had been taught together with other students. It is said that she greatly enjoyed this and that this experience led her to send her own children to school rather than have them educated at home. She was the first, and so far only, female member of the royal family to actually serve in the armed forces, though Queen Victoria was Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian militia, and other royal women have been given honorary ranks. During the VE Day celebrations in London, she and her sister dressed in ordinary clothing and slipped into the crowd secretly to celebrate with everyone.
Elizabeth married Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark) on 20 November 1947. The couple are second cousins once removed: they are both descended from Christian IX of Denmark - Elizabeth II is a great-great-granddaughter through her paternal great-grandmother Alexandra of Denmark, and the Duke is a great-grandson through his paternal grandfather George I of Greece. As well as second cousins once removed, the couple are third cousins: they share Queen Victoria as a great-great-grandmother. Elizabeth's great-grandfather was Edward VII, while Edward's sister Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine was the Duke's great-grandmother. Prince Philip had renounced his claim to the Greek throne and was simply referred to as Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten before being created Duke of Edinburgh prior to their marriage. As a Greek royal, Philip is a member of the house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, the Danish royal house and a line of the House of Oldenburg. Mountbatten was an Anglicisation of his mother's name, Battenberg. The marriage was controversial. Philip was Greek Orthodox, with no financial resources behind him, and had sisters who had married Nazi supporters. Elizabeth's mother was reported in later biographies to have strongly opposed the marriage, even referring to Philip as "the Hun".
After their wedding, Philip and Elizabeth took up residence at Clarence House, London. At various times between 1946 and 1953, the Duke of Edinburgh was stationed in Malta as a serving Royal Navy officer. Lord Mountbatten of Burma had purchased the Villa Gwardamangia (also referred to as the Villa G'Mangia), in the hamlet of Gwardamangia in Malta, in about 1929. Princess Elizabeth stayed there when visiting Philip in Malta. Philip and Elizabeth lived in Malta for a period between 1949 and 1951 (Malta being the only other country in which the Queen has lived, although at that time Malta was a British Protectorate).
On 14 November 1948, Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, Charles. Several weeks earlier, letters patent had been issued so that her children would enjoy a royal and princely status they would not otherwise have been entitled to. Otherwise they would have been styled merely as children of a duke. The couple had four children in all. Though the Royal House is named Windsor, it was decreed, via a 1960 Order-in-Council, that those descendants of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip who were not Princes or Princesses of the United Kingdom should have the personal surname Mountbatten-Windsor.In practice all of their children, in honour of their father, have used Mountbatten-Windsor as their surname (or in Anne's case, her maiden surname). Both Charles and Anne used Mountbatten-Windsor as their surname in the published banns for their first marriages. The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh have four children;
Her father's health declined during 1951, and Elizabeth was soon frequently standing in for him at public events. She visited Greece, Italy and Malta (where Philip was then stationed) during that year. In October, she toured Canada and visited President Harry S. Truman in Washington, D.C. In January, 1952, Elizabeth and Philip set out for a tour of Australia and New Zealand. They had reached Kenya when word arrived of the death of her father, on 6 February 1952, from lung cancer.
Elizabeth was staying at the Treetops Hotel in Thika (today just two hours away from Nairobi) when she was told of her father's death and of her own succession to the throne — a unique circumstance for any such event. She was the first British monarch since the accession of George I to be outside the country at the moment of succession, and also the first in modern times not to know the exact time of her accession (because her father had died in his sleep at an unknown time). On the night her father died, the Chief Justice of Kenya Sir Horace Hearne, who would later accompany the Royal Party back to the UK, escorted the Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, to a dinner at the Treetops Hotel, which is now a very popular tourist retreat in Kenya. It was there that she "went up a princess and came down a Queen".
It was Prince Philip who broke the news of her father's death to Elizabeth. After that, Martin Charteris, then Assistant Private Secretary to the new Queen, asked her what she intended to be called. "Elizabeth, of course," she replied. The royal party returned immediately to England.
Elizabeth II's Proclamation of Accession was read at St James's Palace, on Thursday, 7 February 1952. In Canada, a separate proclamation was issued by the Queen's Privy Council for Canada on the same day.
The following year, the Queen's grandmother, Queen Mary, died of lung cancer on 24 March 1953. Reportedly, the Dowager Queen's dying wish was that the coronation not be postponed. Elizabeth's coronation took place in Westminster Abbey, on 2 June 1953.

Sergey Yesenin (Esenin)

Sergey Yesenin (Esenin) (03.10.1895 - 27.12.1925) - Russian lyrical poet.

Sergey Yesenin was born on 3 October 1895 in the Ryazan Province. He didn’t spend much time with his parents and he was substantially brought up by his grandparents. Yesenin began to compose poetry when he was nine.
In 1912 he moved to Moscow and found a job. At first Yesenin worked in a bookshop and then in the printing establishment. A year later he entered Moscow State University and attended there for eighteen months. Russian folklore affected Yesenin’s early poetry. In 1915, a young poet moved to St. Petersburg and met Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok, Nikolai Klyuev and Sergey Gorodetsky there. It is known that Alexander Blok tried his best to promote Sergey Yesenin as a poet.
The first Yesenin’s book was published in 1916. It was called Radunitsa. Yesenin became one of the most famous poets in those days for his touching poesy about simple life and love. In 1913 he married Anna Izryadnova who was his colleague in the publishing house. They had a son.
When Yesenin moved to St. Petersburg he became acquainted with Klyuev who became his close friend. They lived together for some time. In 1916 he was drafted into the army till 1917. Yesenin was also confident that the October Revolution would be an incitement for a better life and he supported it but later was disappointed. Yesenin occasionally criticized the Bolshevik rule in his works.
In 1917 he married Zinaida Raikh who was an actress. It was his second marriage. They had 2 children, Tatyana and Konstantin. Subsequently Sergey and Zinaida fell out and did not live together. In 1921 they divorced. Their son became a prominent soccer statistician and Tatyana became a writer.
In September 1918, Yesenin founded his own publishing house called "Трудовая Артель Художников Слова".
In 1921 he made the acquaintance of Isadora Duncan who was a dancer, eighteen years his senior. She did not speak Russian and Sergey did not know foreign languages. In 1922 they married. He accompanied Isadora on a tour of Europe and the USA but his dipsomania was out of control. Yesenin often razed hotel rooms and made a disturbance in public places. These facts surfaced in the international press. This marriage was not long and in 1923 he arrived in Moscow. After a while Yesenin met Augusta Miklashevskaya who was an actress. He was in a relationship with her.
Yesenin also had a son by Nadezhda Volpin that year. She was a poet. His son, Alexander Esenin-Volpin, became a poet too. Afterwards he left the USSR and became a mathematician in the USA. Sergey Yesenin did not know him.
The last 2 years Yesenin was addicted to drink but at the same time he wrote some of his best poems. In 1925 he married Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya who was a granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. She was his fifth wife. She tried to help him jolt out of his depression.
His last poem was written in his own blood. The next day Yesenin hanged himself in the Hotel Angleterre at the age of thirty. Yesenin was buried in Moscow’s Vagankovskoye Cemetery.

Georgy Zhukov

Georgy Zhukov (01.12.1896 - 18.06.1974) - Soviet military.

Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov was a well-known Soviet military leader and one of the bravest people. Four times he was acknowledged as the Hero of the Soviet Union. Apart from that in the postwar years people called him “Marshall of the Victory”. He always wore a great number of honorable medals. Zhukov was born in one small village of Kaluga region on November 19, 1896. His parents were simply peasants.
When he was 18 years old, he joined the army and it was a very important event for him. Since then he never parted with the army. Basically, he dedicated all his life to military service. In 1916 he was enrolled in the training and then promoted to a junior non-commissioned officer. While at the regiment he took part in numerous battles and received several merits. In the autumn of the same year he was badly wounded and taken to a military hospital in Kharkov.
After that he joined the Red Army. Being commissioned to Belorussia, he became the Deputy Commander and then the General of the Army. His military career was developing impressively rapidly. From now on he led an active policy recognizing the drawbacks of the staff and fixing them. He prepared a well-trained army for the war.
A lot had been done by him to save the situation at the field of war. While Leningrad was in danger he was appointed as the Commander of its front and then of the capital. Thanks to his strategies the cities were fully freed. In 1943, as the most important milestone in his biography, Zhukov was appointed the Marshall of the Soviet Union. What else could be more honorable for the person who dedicated his life to military service!
In May 1945, Berlin was captured under Zhukov’s command. And he was the one to take the official surrender from Germany. People said the art of war was in his blood. It could be seen in his rational approach and concrete analysis of the situation. His decisions were always original and thus unexpected for the enemy. He was considered a real pioneer of strategic military operations. However, many of his ideas were left unfulfilled.
In 1958 he retired, but was still rather active. Marshall wrote a book about his life and experiences at the front. It was the book of memoirs, which he dedicated to all those who fought for the freedom of nation. Zhukov died in June 1974 and was buried in Moscow. The great leader was married officially twice. He had three beloved daughters - Era, Ella, Mary. One of his daughters wrote and published a book about her heroic father in 2006.

Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood (born 31.05.1930) - American actor.

He is, of course, best known as The Man With No Name. With that menacing squint, the cigar-stub clenched between his teeth, the Stetson pulled low, ever ready to flip back that dirty poncho and reveal that well-oiled six-shooter. Woe betide you if you ever insulted his mule. Everyone, but everyone knows Clint Eastwood from Sergio Leone's Dollar trilogy. That was how he came to fame, wasn't it? Those were the films that led him to become the cynical deputy sheriff of Coogan's Bluff, the mystic revengers of High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, the last of the rebel hold-outs in The Outlaw Josey Wales, and the aged gunslinger dragged back to violence in the Oscar-winning Unforgiven.
But, though he achieved his box-office breakthrough with those legendary mid-Sixties spaghetti westerns, and over the next 3 decades produced some of the greatest cowboy movies ever made, Eastwood has also scored major financial and artistic successes far beyond the dusty genre that spawned him. Where, say, Sylvester Stallone found trouble when he stepped away from Rocky or Rambo, Eastwood remained convincing when not portraying his cold frontiersman or his other major character, the perp-hating, authority-baiting "Dirty" Harry Callahan. Think of his manipulative Confederate seducer in The Beguiled: his orang-utan-loving bare-knuckle fighter in Every Which Way But Loose: his drunken cop, doomed by his incompetence in The Gauntlet: his dying singer, battling his way to the Grand Ole Oprey in Honkytonk Man: his haunted agent, desperate to save the President in In The Line Of Fire: his ageing photographer, suffering unrequited love in The Bridges Of Madison County. No sign of the silent killer there, but great films, all of them, along with so many more. It is to the Academy's undying shame that Eastwood was not nominated in any category till he was gone 60.
That said, his westerns have made such an icon of him that it's hard to conceive he was ever born - it's so much easier to imagine him riding out of the desert one day, fully-formed, heavily armed and quietly demanding to see Sam Goldwyn. Nevertheless, he did have a mum and dad - Clinton Senior and Ruth - and an older sister, Jean. Dad was a steelworker, but this being the Great Depression, work was hard to find, the family moving all over California (Clint was born in St Francis Hospital, San Francisco) before finally settling in Oakland.
Graduating from High School in 1948, to make ends meet he'd take many manual jobs, as a lumberjack, in steel mills and aircraft factories, pumping gas, and bailing hay. He spent plenty of time in seedy dives, listening to his beloved jazz - he was a huge fan of Brubeck and Mulligan, Ellington and Basie, devouring books on them all.
In fact, a life in music was top of his list, and he tried out for a music program at Seattle University, but unfortunately he was drafted before he could enrol. So, in 1950, he found himself in the Army Special Services, based at Fort Ord, in Monterey. Here things changed, as Clint's new friends included a bunch of actors, amongst them Martin Milner and David Janssen, later to find major fame as The Fugitive and Harry O. They would persuade Clint to try a career in Hollywood, and once his 3 military years were up, he gave it a go.
Moving to Los Angeles, he enrolled at LA City College to study business administration, but quickly dropped out. He was enjoying the high life too much, particularly the company of young ladies. In 1953, he married a swimsuit model, Maggie Johnson. They would remain together for 25 years, but Maggie, as Clint was once quoted as saying "had to learn I was going to do as I pleased". Thus she would have to tolerate his daytime trysts with young starlets, or "nooners" with "little dollies", as he put it, as well as, in 1964, a child by one Roxanne Tunis, an exotic dancer who worked with a big snake. The kid, Kimber, would later become an actress. Eventually, Maggie would bear her own children by Clint. First came Kyle, who'd star with Clint in Honkytonk Man and later become a jazz musician, then Alison, also an actress, who'd appear with her dad in Absolute Power.
Clint made his debut as a lab technician in Revenge Of The Creature, directed by Jack Arnold, a sequel to Arnold's own 3-D hit Creature From The Black Lagoon. Here scientists catch the creature and dump him in an aquarium, only to have him fall in love and escape, King Kong -style. Next came Lubin and Francis In The Navy, where Donald O'Connor's four-legged friend advised him on military life. After this, there was more Lubin with Lady Godiva, with Clint as an unlikely Saxon and Maureen O'Hara as Coventry's naked aristocrat, and then Clint took to the skies as a jet squadron leader, heading an aerial assault on a 100 foot spider in Jack Arnold's Tarantula.
1956 brought more small roles, but in more serious pieces. Clint joined David Janssen in Never Say Goodbye, where Rock Hudson starred as an army doctor in 1945 Berlin whose wife gets trapped in the Russian zone (Hudson liked the specs Clint had bought for his role and "borrowed" them). Star In The Dust saw Clint as a ranch hand in his first screen western. Then he was back with Lubin, in a bigger role in The First Travelling Saleslady. This had Ginger Rogers and Carol Channing as turn-of-the-20th Century showbiz gals who, deciding to start their own business, attempt to sell barbed wired to suspicious Texas cowboys. Clint played a rough rider who, utterly bizarrely, winds up paired off with Channing (yes, Clint's first leading lady was the brash bawler who originated the lead in Hello Dolly). Lubin would also direct Clint's next effort, the Jeff Chandler vehicle Away All Boats, where Clint played a marine medic in the Pacific during WW2.
1958 brought just 2 more movies. First came Lafayette Escadrille (again with Janssen), concerning the famous American volunteer squadron of WW1. Then there was Ambush At Cimarron Pass, where a post-Civil War army unit joins up with some cowboys to battle Indians on the warpath. It wasn't great, but interestingly Clint played an ex-Confederate soldier who really doesn't want to help out the Union Army. Eighteen years later, in one of his finest films, his Josey Wales would be the legendary last of the Confederate hold-outs.
It seemed to be going well, then suddenly he was dropped by Universal. Apparently, his Adam's Apple was too big. Undeterred, he continued with his acting classes, worked out in the gym and made ends meet by digging swimming pools in the San Fernando Valley. Auditions only brought one role, in the cop show Highway Patrol.
But everything turned around in 1958 when he won a prime role in Rawhide. Visiting a friend on the CBS lot, he was spotted by an executive who thought he looked so much like a cowboy he hired him immediately. TV western serials were big business back then, with Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, Lawman, Wyatt Earp and Maverick all doing well. Now Charles Marquis Warren, who'd originally brought the radio show Gunlaw to TV as Gunsmoke, had a bright idea - to base a new serial around a never-ending cattle drive. Inspired by Cattle Empire, the 1866 diary of drover George C. Duffield, and Borden Chase's novel The Chisolm Trail (already the inspiration behind John Wayne's Red River), the series had interested CBS and premiered in January, 1959, as a mid-season replacement.
Initially, CBS were not impressed with the figures. In fact, after 10 episodes they dropped the show, and Clint went off to film an episode of Maverick, where he hilariously bullied star James Garner. But after only a few weeks, CBS changed their minds and brought Rawhide back. It was a wise move. With Eric Fleming as his boss, Gil Favor, Clint played trail hand Rowdy Yates, a hot-headed punk (as his name suggests). He didn't feature much in early episodes, but as the series grew so did Yates, maturing into a macho hunk and eventually becoming trail boss himself.
Rawhide was a massive worldwide hit for 7 seven years. Kids everywhere mimicked the catch-phrase "Head 'em up and move 'em out". Clint became a TV star, earning $100,000 a year. By 1962, he was also something of a pop star. It was traditional for TV heroes to release records and Clint knocked out three singles - Unknown Girl, Rowdy and For You, For Me, For Evermore - and an album, Rawhide's Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favourites. Beyond this, he even got to guest star in an episode of Mr Ed - his second encounter with a talking horse-type creature. Clint had always reckoned that, due to his boyish looks, he wouldn't make it till in his thirties, and he was dead right.
Yet still he wasn't happy. Yates had no darkness to him, nothing to interest Clint as an actor. Then he got a call from agents in Italy, asking if he'd consider making a western feature over there, in his off-time. Initially, he refused, but having read the script and recognised it as a reworking of Kurosawa's Yojimbo (unsurprisingly, he loved Kurosawa), he went for it.
Beyond the story-line, there was also director Sergio Leone. Now, most critics have shown scant respect for Leone's movies, giving the impression that they were flukes, springing from some weird Italian take on westerns. But Leone was in fact steeped in cinema and its theory. He'd been Assistant Director on Vittorio De Sica's renowned The Bicycle Thief, a breakthrough in Neo-Realism, using non-actors and natural light. He'd furthermore been Second Unit Director on the epics Quo Vadis, Helen Of Troy, Sodom And Gomorrah and Ben-Hur, working under the likes of William Wyler, Robert Aldrich and Robert Wise. So, no mug he.
Recognising a chance to subvert his nice-guy TV image, and having received assurances that Leone would be concentrating on the "primitive and ignoble nature of frontier life", Clint picked out a poncho and hopped on the plane to film A Fistful Of Dollars.
Clint's part had initially been offered to Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson, but neither had bitten (five years later, the then infinitely more famous Leone would nab them both for his Once Upon A Time In America). Clint took his chance with both hands. Mean, scruffy, manipulative and utterly cool, his anonymous gunslinger played two warring families off against one another with great aplomb, receiving only the occasional thrashing. It was brilliant stuff and entirely novel, with its ultra-close-ups and beautiful panoramas, its clipped dialogue and exceptional Ennio Morricone soundtrack. Everyone was cheating, betraying and sweating in the palpable heat of the desert. And Clint was a revelation, sticking tight to his old drama coach's assertion: "Don't just do something, STAND there".
For the next 2 years, Eastwood would spend his breaks from Rawhide working on Dollar movies. First, in For A Few Dollars More, he found himself in competition with a slick Lee Van Cleef as they both hunted the bounty on renegade Indio. Punching each other out and shooting each other's hats, they made a superb double act, and the conclusion, where the duelling Van Cleef and Indio await the last chime of a musical watch before opening fire, is one of the great western sequences.
Then came The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, where Eastwood, Van Cleef and Eli Wallach tricked each other mercilessly in their pursuit of $200,000 in gold, buried, as it happens, in a Confederate graveyard. The final sequence contains one of Clint's great lines, when he says to Wallach "You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend. Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig".
The Dollar westerns were made on an extremely low budget. Indeed, Clint, who received $15,000 for A Fistful Of Dollars, had had to share not just a room but a bed with Wallach. But when all three were released in the US in 1966, they were massively successful, immediately turning TV star Clint into a fully-fledged movie star. La Streghe, a 5-segment Italian art movie, would be the last time he found himself down the credits. Interestingly, Clint's segment - a sensuous, fantastical affair where he played alongside Silvana Mangano - was directed by Leone's former mentor and triple Oscar-winner Vittorio De Sica.
Now he was off and running. Hang 'Em High saw him survive a lynching then return as a lawman to remorseless round up his attackers. Then came Coogan's Bluff, where he played an Arizona country cop in New York to collect a prisoner. This had Clint's "character" - arrogant, brutal, authority-baiting and sexually irresistible - come to an outlandish peak as he argued with department chief Lee J. Cobb, romanced his prisoner's probation officer AND his girlfriend, and basically battered everyone else. Two more points of note. First, the film being screened at the Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel club is actually Eastwood's own Tarantula. Second, this marked the first time Clint worked with director Don Siegel, helmsman of such hard-edged thrillers as Riot In Cell Block 11, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and Lee Marvin's The Killers. Appreciating Siegel's discipline, no-nonsense approach and sense of timing and drama, Clint would collaborate with him on many of his finest works. Tellingly, he would dedicate his Oscar-winning Unforgiven to both Siegel and Sergio Leone.
1968 also brought Clint's first blockbuster, Where Eagles Dare. Penned by Alistair MacLean, this saw him paired with Richard Burton as the Allies attempt to break a captured US General out of a Nazi-held castle. Shot through with superb special effects, it featured Clint's highest ever body-count and was a big hit. And Clint had almost missed out. Reluctant to take second billing beneath Burton, he'd only been placated by a hefty wage of $800,000.
Famed as an action star, Clint now moved into unfamiliar territory - something he'd do with regularity throughout his career. Next up was Paint Your Wagon, a western comedy-musical with a score by Lerner and Lowe. Here Clint teamed up with another taciturn tough-guy, Lee Marvin, sharing Mormon wife Jean Seberg as they hunted riches in the California Gold Rush. Amidst break-ins, kidnappings, drunken brawls and hijacks, there were plenty of memorable songs, including Marvin's growly Number One Wandrin' Star, Clint contributing Elisa, Gold Fever, the unconscionably wimpy I Talk To The Trees, and many others. His musical efforts have usually been overlooked, but he'd later provide the song Burning Bridges for Kelly's Heroes (a minor hit as a single), and much of the soundtrack to Honkytonk Man. Bronco Billy would see him dueting with Merle Haggard, Any Which Way You Can with Ray Charles, and he'd provide the themes for Unforgiven, Absolute Power, A Perfect World and The Bridges Of Madison County. To prove the respect with he's held by "real" musicians, Diana Krall would later cover his Why Should I Care?
As said, Eastwood was ever practical, and now began to make use of his A-list position. His next movie would be the first for his own production company, Malpaso, and he'd produce nearly all of his movies from here on in. Two Mules For Sister Sara, reuniting with director Siegel, had him down in Mexico, rescuing nun Shirley Maclaine from rapist cowboys, then gradually coming to suspect that she's not as saintly as her garments suggest. It was a fine action-comedy, as was his next picture, Kelly's Heroes, directed by Brian G. Hutton, who'd earlier helmed Where Eagles Dare. This saw Clint leading a rabble of US soldiers across enemy lines to nab a hoard of Nazi treasure, with Donald Sutherland standing out as the groovy hippy Sergeant Oddball.
1971 saw Clint step away from action again. It also revealed him to be building a trustworthy team around himself. His next movie, The Beguiled, would be directed by Siegel, and shot by Bruce Surtees, who'd stick with Clint for another 15 years, with music provided by Lalo Schifrin, who'd been onboard since Coogan's Bluff. The Beguiled was a real departure, with Eastwood as an absolute wretch of a Confederate soldier, wounded in the Civil War and taken in by the denizens of a small private girls' school. Sly, charming and without conscience, he steals the hearts of pupils and teachers alike, seducing several of them, but messes with the wrong gal when he petulantly kills Randolph, a pet turtle. Onscreen, he'd never again be punished so summarily for taking a life - and, by God, has he taken some lives.
The Beguiled was a superb thriller, still shocking even today. His next wasn't bad either as, with Siegel advising, he donned the director's cap for Play Misty For Me. He was immediately efficient, completing the shoot in just 21 days. The movie had him as a casually lascivious DJ in Carmel (where he now lived, and of which he'd become mayor in 1986) who sleeps with a fan, Jessica Walter, then dumps her. Unfortunately for him, she's a direct forerunner of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and will not be treated so shoddily.
If Play Misty For Me brought accusations of misogyny, they were nothing compared to the storm surrounding Clint's next film, the notorious Dirty Harry, based on San Francisco's real-life Zodiac Killer. Here he made his debut as Inspector Harry Callahan, a San Francisco cop who'll do pretty much anything to bring criminals to justice, constantly battling against bureaucratic jobsworths and a liberal morality that, to him, seems out-of-control. His present case is that of a sniper, Scorpio (brilliantly played by Andrew Robinson) who, having murdered to prove his seriousness, kidnaps a young girl and demands a huge ransom from the City - less he let her run out of air. As officials prevaricate, Harry tortures Scorpio to discover the girl's whereabouts, and thus finds himself suspended and the killer freed. Now outside the law, he must seek justice alone.
Harry was another fascinating creation, a glorious misfit with nerves of steel. His entrance was one of cinema's most exciting ever. Buying a burger, he notices an armed robbery in progress and violently intervenes, causing a chaos of wrecked cars and spouting water hydrants. Still munching his burger, he approaches a wounded and desperate robber and challenges him to reach for his gun with the classic line "I know what you're thinking - did he fire 6 shots or only 5?", before threatening him with destructive potential of his soon-to-be-famous handgun, a Smith & Wesson Magnum .44, "the most powerful handgun in the world". When the man bottles it, Harry aims at him and pulls the trigger on an empty chamber, then wheels away with a beam of satisfaction.
This kind of behaviour sent the liberal media into paroxysms of outrage. The action genre, said critic Pauline Kael "has always had a fascist potential, and it has finally surfaced". Others, in the burgeoning counter-culture, condemned the movie for being pro-police when "the pigs" were universally despised. But Dirty Harry was far more complex than that. Fascism generally involves the tyrannical oppression of a people by a controlling bureaucracy, and Callahan was resolutely and aggressively against that (in tune with Eastwood's own past, Harry was a blue collar worker oppressed by "the suits"). One of the questions asked here is this: when a man has taken a girl and buried her, and a second man violates the first's rights in order to save her, who is oppressing who? If there is a fascist here, which one is it? And, if it's both, which one do you choose? Better make up your mind quickly, or that girl will die.
Dirty Harry was influential in that it brought victims' rights to the fore in movies, as well as inspiring several thousand maverick cop movies. But in the furore over Harry's brutality and crowd-pleasing one-liners, most failed to notice how Callahan was actually portrayed. For all his wise-cracking relentlessness, he's hardly someone you'd want to be. His wife's left him, he lives alone, he has no real friends and doesn't know his neighbours. He eats poorly and his job prospects are non-existent. Really, he's a bit of a loser. Indeed, in an early version of the script, the robbery scene described above ended with Harry holding the Magnum to his own head. None of the Dirty Harry rip-offs that followed would have a lead this interesting.
As with the Dollar trilogy, Clint was not first choice. Frank Sinatra was chosen as Harry Callahan, but hurt his hand in an accident. John Wayne, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were all approached. Also, war hero film star Audie Murphy was asked to play Scorpio, but died before giving an answer. Though superb, his replacement Robinson was so anti-guns he flinched every time he fired, causing Siegel to shut down production for a week and send his sniper on a crash-course in sniping.
1972 was an up-and-down year. It started with Joe Kidd, oddly written by Elmore Leonard, where Clint played an ex-bounty hunter hired by Robert Duvall to catch a Mexican rebel. Quickly he comes to ask himself who the bad guys really are. This was followed by a real humdinger, the mystic western High Plains Drifter, written by Ernest Tidyman, who the year before had delivered both Shaft and The French Connection. The movie took Clint's iconic gunslinger to an absolute extreme, intimating that this time he's a lawman back from beyond the grave to revenge himself on a gang of outlaws who whipped him to death. Or is he the victim's brother? Whatever, the townsfolk of Lago, who didn't stand up for their murdered sheriff, have had the gang jailed. But now they're out and on their way back to waste the town. So, in rides Clint, guns blazing, and the townsfolk hire him to protect them. He proceeds to assume total authority, appointing as mayor the town's scapegoat dwarf, taking for himself the best room, the best food and the best (married) women, and painting all the buildings bright red. After all, the city-limits sign now says Welcome To Hell.
It was such a strange film, packed with deeply flawed characters. They're cowardly, vicious, jealous, curious, ambitious, and fearful. The women in particular have been crushed into accepting silence and are, to a point, freed by the stranger's actions (interesting this, as Eastwood's films were so often accused of misogyny). Everyone exhibits the worst qualities, yet everyone is utterly, convincingly human amidst the carnage of this society. This makes it one of the best westerns ever made.
After enjoying a complete change of pace by directing Breezy, where William Holden had an affair with a young hippy chick, now came the first of the Dirty Harry sequels, Magnum Force. Here a gang of super-rookies, including David Soul and Robert Urich, who idolise Callahan for his aggressive tactics, start killing perps who cheat the courts on technicalities. They invite their hero to join them but he refuses (Why? BECAUSE HE'S NOT A FASCIST), and goes after them instead. There would be three more follow-ups, of fast-decreasing quality. 1976's The Enforcer would see Harry suffering a female partner (Tyne Daly) and battling a terrorist gang on Alcatraz. 1983's Sudden Impact, which featured the famous catchphrase "Go ahead, make my day", saw him sorting things out when a rape victim starts slaughtering the gang that attacked her. And finally 1988's The Dead Pool featured a distributed list of local celebrities, including Callahan, with people betting on which would die first. Just sick fun, you think, till someone starts lowering their odds by offing the celebs himself.
After Magnum Force, Clint stepped away from cops %u2018n' cowboys for a short while. Written and directed by Michael "Deer Hunter" Cimino, Thunderbolt And Lightfoot was a semi-comic heist thriller that saw him paired with young drifter Jeff Bridges, as part of a gang attempting to replicate a robbery they'd committed years before. It's clever, funny and really brutal as gang-member George Kennedy gets increasingly riled with Bridges, eventually giving him an unforgettable kicking. This was followed by The Eiger Sanction, where Clint played college professor and former mountain-climber Jonathan Hemlock, who finances his art collection by working as an assassin for a thoroughly shady government office. When his former partner is butchered, he must join a team scaling the infamous Eiger in order to identify and "sanction" the killer.
After Play Misty For Me and High Plains Drifter, The Eiger Sanction was Eastwood's third directorial effort. His fourth would arguably be his best. In The Outlaw Josey Wales, based on Forrest Tucker's novel Gone To Texas, his Wales was a Missouri farmer whose family is murdered by renegade Union soldiers - "red legs". Joining Bloody Bill Anderson's raiders, he becomes the most psychotic revenger of them all, refusing to surrender even when his peers have handed themselves over (and been executed for their pains). On the run, he crosses Indian Territory into Texas, hounded all the way by soldiers and bounty hunters. Then, having saved a bunch of Kansas innocents from comancheros, he joins them in their search for a new frontier home - leading to a final confrontation with the mighty Indian leader Ten Bears.
Pulling together all he'd learned from Leone and Siegel, as well as the vast experience he'd gained on Rawhide, Eastwood here created a masterpiece, a beautifully shot combination of romance and realism, packed with trail wisdom and gritty, violent encounters. Written by Philip Kaufman, who'd later pen Raiders Of The Lost Ark and direct both The Right Stuff and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, it had a brilliant script, too (Kaufman actually began as director, but was replaced by Eastwood during shooting). "Man's gotta do something for a living" says a bounty hunter who's cornered Wales. "Dyin' ain't much of a livin', boy" comes the terrifying reply.
Clint's Josey Wales was just the man he'd imagined as a kid back in the Yosemite National Park, running from a savage past, his dreams of a brighter future always shredded by those who will not let him forget. And, as said, the film was a masterpiece. But so concerned was the Academy with the "fascistic" tendencies of the characters Eastwood had played thus far, it was nominated only for its music. Incredible. When, 16 years later, he next attempted a western of the same scope and complexity - Unforgiven - they'd attempt to assuage their guilt by giving him Best Picture.
The Outlaw Josey Wales also saw the undermining of Eastwood's marriage to Maggie Johnson, when he began an affair with co-star Sondra Locke, an actress Oscar-nominated for 1968's The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. When, after The Enforcer, Clint cast Locke as his leading lady in The Gauntlet, Maggie divorced him.
The Gauntlet saw a new high in violence. Here Locke played a tough hooker who has the sexy goods on a top official, with Clint as cop Ben Shockley, sent to escort her from Vegas to Phoenix. He thinks this is because he's the man for the job, but actually, as she continually points out, it's because he's useless - there's a conspiracy to stop her testifying. So, the guns are out for the couple, and there are so many guns. A house is shot to pieces, then a car and, in a memorable finale, Eastwood drives a bus through Phoenix to City Hall, being blasted from both sides by thousands of cops. Fantastic stuff.
After this, Eastwood began to seriously vary his roles. Next came the down-home comedy Every Which Way But Loose, where he played an easy-going mechanic and part-time bare-knuckle fighter who, after a one-nighter with country singer Locke, crosses the country after her, accompanied by his pet orang-utan Clyde, and his brother (Geoffrey Lewis, Juliette's dad and a longtime Eastwood collaborator). After them come a couple of off-duty cops he's offended, and a hilariously pathetic band of bikers, the Black Widows. Ruth Gordon would stand out as Clint's fabulously crotchety mum.
This was followed by Escape From Alcatraz, where Clint was directed for the last time by Don Siegel. Slow, tense and brilliantly shot, it concerned the only (possibly) successful, er, escape from Alcatraz. Then it was back to comedy with Bronco Billy, where Clint was a shoe-salesman who's left his dull life to run a travelling cowboy show. This was an excellent comic performance by Clint, whose Bronco Billy McCoy, purposefully deluded and remorselessly decent, was constantly under fire from the sarcastic barbs of Locke's jaded heiress. After this came an Every Which Way follow-up, Any Which Way You Can, which saw Clint in a super-scrap with William Smith, with all the old characters showing up again. This last movie would be directed by Buddy Van Horn who'd been Second Unit director on Magnum Force and would later direct Clint in The Dead Pool and Pink Cadillac. He'd organise the stunts on many of Eastwood's movies - a job he also performed on both Spartacus and The Deer Hunter.
These comedies would help to lighten Clint's image and were all major hits, seeing Clint join Burt Reynolds at the very top of the Hollywood tree. Bronco Billy did indeed make less than its fellows but, thanks to Eastwood's incredible efficiency, it only cost $5 million. Being as it was sold to TV for $10 million, you can see the kind of profit percentages he enjoyed.
After these comedies, though, Clint had a pretty shaky Eighties. Firefox, where he played a traumatised pilot sneaking into Russia to steal a super-fighter, was only a passable thriller. Honkytonk Man, where he played a dying country singer who needs his young nephew to drive him to Nashville to the Grand Ole Oprey, introducing the kid to much more than he ought along the way, was far better, a genuinely moving drama. Then came Sudden Impact, and Tightrope where he was a cop chasing a killer of girls. Things get interesting when the killer moves on Eastwood's friends and family, and we begin to realise that Clint is pretty pervy himself. After this came City Heat, a miserable attempt to team Eastwood with fellow megastar Reynolds. With the duo battling the Mob 1930s Kansas City, it was at best knockabout nonsense.
Thankfully, it got better. Pale Rider took him back to High Plains Drifter territory as a priest (as it happens, a formerly dead priest) who protects a community of prospectors from an avaricious businessman and his hired team of ruthless gunmen. It was a mysterious and violent take on Shane, and another excellent western.
But then his career went into freefall. Heartbreak Ridge was interesting only in that it was the first film where he identified himself as "a relic". Here he played a gunnery sergeant and veteran of both Korea and Vietnam, who's training up marines but, considered "only useful in war", he's on the way out. Then comes redemption in the shape of the invasion of Grenada - though it's not much of a redemption as, really, that wasn't much of a war. And it got worse. After the wretched Dead Pool came the silly road movie Pink Cadillac where he played a modern-day bounty hunter helping Bernadette Peters rescue her kid from her neo-Nazi husband.
As the Nineties arrived, so did trouble as Sondra Locke launched a palimony suit against him. Their relationship had been stormy, and all the more so when Clint had two children, Scott and Kathryn, by air hostess Jacelyn Reeves. He and Locke would split in 1988, with the suit launched in 1990. The final agreement would include a development deal for Locke with Warners for whom she would direct three movies. But, by 1999, with all her proposals having been rejected, she sued again. Throughout, Eastwood maintained a stony silence.
Now entering his sixties, there seemed little chance of Eastwood making a comeback, yet he did it anyway. White Hunter, Black Heart saw him as director John Huston, trying to hunt elephants and control the wayward finances while shooting The African Queen. This was a sturdy movie that regained a critical approval that was only slightly dented by his next film, The Rookie, where his tough cop was partnered by young loose cannon Charlie Sheen in a hunt for major car thieves.
And then came the ultimate approval, for Unforgiven. Eastwood had had the script lying around for ages, but waited till he himself was old enough to play the role of William Munny, a former gunslinger and robber whose wife has died, leaving him to bring up their kids alone. When the chance of a bounty killing comes his way, he has to take it and, along with old compadre Morgan Freeman, dusts off his six-guns to take on Gene Hackman's gloriously aggressive sheriff, Little Bill.
Like The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven was a western of great scope and humanity, peopled with memorable characters like Richard Harris's English Bob (according to Little Bill "the Duck of Death"). And, as said, it would see the Academy honouring Eastwood at last with Best Film and Best Director - just as they would the next year with another money-spinning maverick, Steven Spielberg. In 1995, they'd also present Clint with the prestigious Irving Thalberg Memorial Award. Eastwood has usually received more respect outside his own country. In France, for instance, Pale Rider, White Hunter and Bird, his Golden Globe-winning biopic of Charlie Parker, were all nominated for the Palm D-Or at Cannes.
As well as those Oscars, he was also given another child, Francesca Ruth, by English-born actress Frances Fisher, known for the detective series Edge Of Night and who'd appeared in both Pink Cadillac and Unforgiven. Their relationship would not last long, though. By 1996, Clint was ensconced with TV anchor-woman Dina Ruiz who, though 35 years his junior, would that year bear his daughter, Morgan.
Now Clint was on a roll. Unforgiven was followed by In The Line Of Fire where he played an FBI agent who, deeply affected by his failure to save President Kennedy, finds himself struggling, years later, to prevent super-smart assassin John Malkovich doing the presidential dirty again. Next came another winner, A Perfect World, where he drew an excellent performance from Kevin Costner as an escaped con who kidnaps a kid. He even dared to step right away from the action genre with The Bridges Of Madison County, a sure-fire weepie where his National Geographic photographer enjoys and suffers a brief, unrequited love with housewife Meryl Streep.
His next outings were not so hot. Absolute Power had him as a burglar who witnesses a murder by President Gene Hackman - a fine premise but a convoluted novel made for a dull script. Then came True Crime where he was an alcoholic, adulterous journalist trying to rescue Isaiah Washington on Death Row. Far superior was the Eastwood-directed In The Garden Of Good And Evil, where John Cusack became embroiled in sex, death and voodoo in the salacious South.
Space Cowboys upped the ante a little, when he played a retired engineer called in to save a failing satellite, and recruiting his old astronaut buddies to help. These included Tommy Lee Jones, as well as Clint's Kelly's Heroes co-star Donald Sutherland, and James Garner, who he'd so memorably pushed about in Maverick. It was unchallenging fare, but reasonable fun nonetheless. Blood Work would be far more complex, with Eastwood as a retired FBI profiler, recovering from a heart transplant, who's hired to investigate a woman's death. Not only does he find he's got that woman's heart, but she might also have been murdered by a serial killer he pursued for years and never caught.
After this would come Mystic River, on which he served as director, but not star. This saw three Irish kids in Boston have their lives radically altered when one of them is captured by a child molester. Years later, the grown-up kids now played by Tim Robbins, Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon, there is another terrible event. Penn's daughter is murdered, cop Bacon investigates, and handyman Robbins looks guilty as hell. Packed with secrets and suspicions, love and loss, the movie was boosted by a series of brilliant performances that saw Penn and Robbins win Oscars (Eastwood would be nominated as Best Director and his work as Best Film). Shot, with Eastwood's usual economy in just 39 days, it also made three times its $30 million budget in the US. Interestingly, it also featured a cameo by Eli Wallach - the first time he'd worked with Eastwood since The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.
For his next outing, Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood would both direct and star. Based on Rope Burns, a set of stories by former boxing manager and cut-man Jerry Boyd (writing as FX Toole), this would see him play Frankie Dunn, a trainer who refuses to take on hick girl fighter Hilary Swank (because she's a "girly"). Eventually, though, he persuaded by Swank's persistence and the wise words of ex-Unforgiven co-star Morgan Freeman, playing a friend and former protege. Like Mystic River, the film was genuinely strong on character, not really a boxing movie at all, and it won Golden Globes for Swank and Eastwood the director. Swank and Freeman would also snap up Oscars, with Eastwood losing out to Jamie Foxx as Best Actor. He would, though, take the gongs for Best Film and, with Martin Scorsese losing out again, Best Director. Eastwood would move on to another movie written by Paul Haggis, Flags Of Our Fathers, concerning the taking of Iwo Jima in 1945. This would be co-produced by Steven Spielberg, as The Bridges Of Madison County had been.
Beyond this, there is certain to be more involvement in music (he'd continued to write music for his own movies, inclusing Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, the latter seeing him nominated for a Golden Globe). Eastwood's love of jazz has only grown stronger over the years. Indeed, in 1996, he played Carnegie Hall in a tribute to the jazz used in his movies. Coming onstage he announced "I can't leave Carnegie Hall without playing at least one chord . . . the Lost Chord, so you're going to have to bear with me". 2003 would see him direct one episode of miniseries The Blues (as did the likes of Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders). Eastwood's segment, Piano Blues, would feature Ray Charles and Dr John, as well as lesser known luminaries as Pinetop Perkins. Clint will also continue with his civic responsibilities having, in 2002, been appointed one of 9 Parks Commissioners for California. At the induction ceremony, he held up his new badge and said "You're all under arrest". He'll furthermore continue to help run his Tehama Golf Club in Carmel (he also has a part share in the famous Pebble Beach course), and to sell his sportswear brand, Tehama Clint, and his beer, Pale Rider Ale. And, considering how famous he is, there may well be more controversy. 2004 saw him take action against Patrick McGilligan and the publishers of his Eastwood biography, wherein he claimed that Clint had beaten and abused his first wife, Maggie. The passages were removed, damages undisclosed.
Aside from being one of cinema's most iconic stars, Clint Eastwood has earned the status of great film-maker. Having scored with westerns, thrillers, dramas, romances and comedies, he has proved himself to be capable in most every genre. You have to respect him. Well, DON'T you, punk?

Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov (13.04.1963) - Russian sportsman.

Garry Kasparov (nee Weinstein) is one of the best chess Grandmasters, former World Chess Champion, Honored Master of Sport, writer and political activist. He won eight World Chess Olympiads and eleven chess “Oscars”. He was born on April 13th, 1963 in Azerbaijan, in a noble family. Both his parents were successful engineers and his grandfather was a composer. At the age of four he learned to read. He soon developed interest in history and geography.
When he was seven, he dreamt of becoming a doctor to cure his seriously ill father. Before his death his father gave him a present – a chess clock. From now on his mother took all the responsibility for his education. She fully dedicated her life to Garry’s career and well-being. At the age of sixteen the boy already had the title of a world champion. When he was 22, he began playing with the world champion Anatoly Karpov. Their match lasted for almost half a year and was registered as the longest match in the history of chess.
When he was a teenager, he won three gold medals for excellent graduation, victories in chess among juniors and participation at the World Chess Olympiad within the USSR team. Later on, he had three convincing victories at international tournaments in Yugoslavia. From October 1984 Garry Kasparov started a long-lasting unprecedented confrontation with Anatoly Karpov, which lasted over 10 years. Their first unlimited match involved 48 games. The match was interrupted by the President of FIDE, as the players were exhausted. The winner was Anatoly Karpov.
However, six months later the rematch was won by Kasparov. All in all, these two have played 144 games, most of which ended in draw. Continuing the best traditions of world champions, Garry Kasparov currently pays lots of attention to social and literary activities in the field of chess. Apart from that, he organizes and supports children’s chess schools in Russia, Israel and several other countries. Garry was one of the co-founders of Professional Chess Association. He is well-known and respected in the world for his education, intelligence and brilliant image. Many experts say he is the best chess player of all times.

Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage (07.01.1964) - American actor.

Nicolas Cage (born Nicolas Kim Coppola; January 7, 1964) is an American actor, producer and director, having appeared in over 60 films including Raising Arizona (1987), The Rock (1996), Face/Off (1997), Gone In 60 Seconds (2000), National Treasure (2004), Ghost Rider (2007), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), and Kick-Ass (2010). Cage, at age 32, became the fifth youngest actor ever to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Leaving Las Vegas.
In 1988, Cage began dating Christina Fulton, who later bore their son, Weston Coppola Cage (born December 26, 1990). Weston appeared in Cage's film Lord of War as Vladimir, a young Ukrainian mechanic who quickly disarms a Mil Mi-24 helicopter and is lead singer of the black metal band Eyes of Noctum. In December 2009, Fulton sued Cage for $13 million and the house she is living in. The suit was in response to an order that she leave the house, brought about by the financial problems of Cage.
To avoid the appearance of nepotism as the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, he changed his name early in his career to Nicolas Cage, inspired in part by the Marvel Comics superhero Luke Cage. Since his minor role in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, with Sean Penn, Cage has appeared in a wide range of films, both mainstream and offbeat. He tried out for the role of Dallas Winston in his uncle's film The Outsiders, based on S.E. Hinton's novel, but lost to Matt Dillon. He was also in Coppola's films Rumble Fish and Peggy Sue Got Married.
Other Cage roles included appearances in the acclaimed 1987 romantic-comedy Moonstruck, also starring Cher; The Coen Brothers cult-classic comedy Raising Arizona; David Lynch's 1990 offbeat film Wild at Heart; a lead role in Martin Scorsese's 1999 New York City paramedic drama Bringing Out the Dead; and Ridley Scott's 2003 quirky drama Matchstick Men, in which he played an agoraphobic, mysophobic, obsessive-compulsive con artist with a tic disorder.
Cage has been married three times. His first wife was the actress Patricia Arquette (married on April 8, 1995, divorce finalized on May 18, 2001).
Cage's second wife was singer/songwriter Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley, of whom Cage is a fan and on whom he based his performance in Wild at Heart. They married on August 10, 2002 and filed for divorce on November 25, 2002, after 108 days of marriage; their divorce was finalized on May 16, 2004. The divorce proceeding was longer than the marriage.
His third and current wife Alice Kim, a former waitress who previously worked at the Los Angeles restaurant Kabuki, met Cage at the Los Angeles-based Korean nightclub, Le Prive. She is the mother of his son, Kal-El (born October 3, 2005), named after Superman's birth name.Cage was once considered for the role of Superman in a film to be directed by Tim Burton. Alice had a minor role in the 2007 film Next, which Cage produced. They were married at a private ranch in Northern California on July 30, 2004.
Cage has created a comic book with his son Weston, called Voodoo Child, which is published by Virgin Comics. Cage has a strong interest in comic books, and once auctioned a collection of 400 vintage comics through Heritage Auctions for over $1.6 million in 2002.
In 1997 Cage broke the auction record for Lamborghinis when he placed a bid on a rare Miura SVJ for US$490,000.
He is a fan and collector of painter and underground comic artist Robert Williams. He has written introductions for Juxtapoz magazine and purchased the painting Death On The Boards.

John Kennedy

John Kennedy (29.05.1917 - 22.10.1963) - 35th President of the United States.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on 29 May 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the second child in the family of Rose Fitzgerald and Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. His mother was a child of John Fitzgerald who was a mayor of Boston. While living in Brookline John Kennedy studied at different schools through 4th grade. In 1929 after moving to Bronxville, New York Kennedy studied at Riverdale Country School. In 1931 Kennedy was operated on his for appendicitis and as a result he came back home. His family also had homes in Palm Beach, Florida and in Hyannisport, Massachusetts where John also spent a lot of time.
For the 9th through 12th grade Kennedy attended The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut where his brother had studied. While at Choate Kennedy’s behavior was bad. The notorious stunts of Kennedy and his friends made him famous. They called themselves “The Muckers Club”. While studying Kennedy had problems with his health and in 1934 he was hospitalized. The same year his illness was diagnosed as colitis. A year later he graduated from Choate.
In 1936 Kennedy entered Harvard College. From 1937 to 1939 he tripped to different countries including France, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Balkans, Czechoslovakia and Germany. While at Harvard Kennedy became interested in political philosophy. His thesis was about British participation in the Munich Agreement entitled “Appeasement in Munich”. This work was a great success. In 1940 Kennedy graduated from Harvard College.
In 1953 Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier. They had 4 children but only 2 of them survived to adulthood.
Between 1947 and 1953 after military service John Kennedy represented Massachusetts's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives as a democrat. For the next seven years he served in the U.S. Senate.
In January 1960 Kennedy initiated his presidential campaign. Nine months later Republican candidate Richard Nixon and John Kennedy appeared in televised presidential debates which were the first in U.S. history. Kennedy’s opponent looked strung and diffident during the debates. Moreover Nixon’s leg was injured. At the same time John Kennedy was relaxed. From that time television became an integral part of politics.
In 1961 John Kennedy became the 35th President of the USA. There were a lot of important historical events during Kennedy’s presidency including the African American Civil Rights Movement, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and early stages of the Vietnam War. It should be noted that Kennedy was the only Catholic president in U.S. history.
On November 22, 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas. The assassin was Lee Harvey Oswald who was also killed in two days.

Jim Carrey

Jim Carrey (17.01.1962) - American actor.

James Eugene "Jim" Carrey (born January 17, 1962) is a Canadian-American actor and comedian. He has received two Golden Globe Awards and has also been nominated on four occasions. Carrey began stand-up comedy in 1979, performing at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto, Ontario. After gaining prominence in 1981, he began working at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles where he was soon noticed by comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who immediately signed him to open his tour performances. Carrey, long interested in film and television, developed a close friendship with comedian Damon Wayans, which landed him a role in the sketch comedy hit In Living Color, in which he portrayed various characters during the show's 1990 season.
The Carrey family fell on hard times and were forced to move to Scarborough, a Toronto suburb, where they took security and janitorial jobs in the Titan Wheels factory. Carrey began working eight-hour shifts each day after school. Eventually, the Carrey family escaped life at Titan by living on a relative's lawn out of the family Volkswagen van until they could move back downtown.
Carrey dropped out of high school, and began to work in comedy clubs and develop his act, which included impersonations of celebrities such as Michael Landon and James Stewart. In 1979 he moved to Los Angeles and started working in The Comedy Store, where he was noticed by comedian Rodney Dangerfield. Dangerfield liked Carrey's act so much that he signed Carrey up to open Dangerfield's tour performances.
Carrey's first starring role in a film was in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994). Through the 1990s, Carrey released one highly successful film after another, including The Mask in 1994, Batman Forever in 1995, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls in 1995, Liar Liar in 1997, and The Truman Show in 1998.
In 1999, Carrey fought hard for his next role as comedian Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. There were quite a few actors fighting for the role, including Edward Norton, but director Milos Forman and the other filmmakers knew Carrey was their "Andy" when they saw him audition. Carrey performed for them as Kaufman with Kaufman's actual bongo drums.
Carrey's manager is James Miller, younger brother of comedian Dennis Miller.
Carrey has won repeatedly nominations from the two major foreign press associations, with two Golden Satellite Award nominations and six nominations for Golden Globe Awards, winning two of the latter. He has been even more successful with MTV Movie Awards, with over 20 nominations and awards, some shared (as in the 1995 "Best Kiss" award shared with Lauren Holly). He has also been nominated three times for Saturn Awards.
He is an inductee of Canada's Walk of Fame.
Carrey has been listed on a number of lists of famous people that are claimed to have or have had bipolar disorder, but the truth of these rumours is not known.
Jim Carrey continues to appear in successful comedies as well as more dramatic roles. His performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) earned high praise from critics, who once again incorrectly predicted that Carrey would receive his first Oscar nomination.

Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman (born 20.06.1967) - American actress.

It's a mark of Australia's cultural strength that they've provided so many of today's top-line cinematic greats. Aside from the obvious Mel Gibson and Cate Blanchett, there's also the less well-known yet hugely talented likes of Judy Davis and Naomi Watts as well as a couple of New Zealanders who made it in Aussie productions. Step forward, Sam Neill and Russell Crowe. And, of course, there's the woman who, Gibson aside, is the hottest of the lot, the ex-Mrs Cruise but a fine actress and Oscar-winner in her own right - Nicole Kidman.
Strangely, given what most people know of her, Nicole is not a fair dinkum Aussie at all, actually being born on Honolulu, Hawaii (on the 20th of June, 1967), and holding dual US and Australian citizenship. Her father, Anthony, a biochemist and clinical psychologist, had moved to the island with his wife Janelle to work on a research project. Almost as soon as Nicole appeared (she'd be closely followed by sister, Antonia), Anthony's work with breast cancer took the family to Washington DC for three years. It was only then that the girl who would be known as one of Australia's prime exports began life on Antipodean soil, when the Kidmans moved back to the posh Longueville district of Sydney (coincidentally, one of Nicole's most renowned relatives was also named Sydney - he was a cattle baron).
Nicole was an active, artistic child, and focused from an absurdly young age. She began taking ballet lessons at 3, moving onto mime at 8 and drama at 10. Her first public role was at 6, as a loud sheep in her elementary school's Christmas pageant. She grew up fast. Janelle was an active feminist and Anthony a labour advocate, both of them discussing the issues of the day with their kids over dinner and having them hand out pamphlets on the street.
When it came to acting, Nicole possessed the same intensity as her future husband. She was always seen as an outsider - she was known as Storky due to her peculiar height (she fast reached a whopping 5' 11") - and, as she approached her teens she departed even further from her peers. While the other girls were down the beach, eyeing up the boys, Nicole spent her weekends at the Philip Street Theatre, watching, learning. She had her sights set on higher things - as you'd expect from someone whose influences include Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave and, above all, Katherine Hepburn - and, indeed, she had her first kiss onstage in Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening. As the play concerned sexual repression in the late 1800's, it was something of a wild one too, Nicole having to yell "Beat me! Harder! Harder!" each night. More impressive than a clumsy fumble under the pier, eh?
Come the age of 14, things started to move. As a sign of events to come, one night Nicole received a note of congratulations and encouragement from an audience member, a film student who invited Nicole to appear in her examination short. Nicole turned it down, as it conflicted with her own school exams. Shame, for the student was Jane Campion, later to direct The Piano and then the Kidman-starring Portrait Of A Lady.
Then the real roles began to appear. There were a couple of TV parts, and then a sudden success. Kidman's film debut was in Bush Christmas, about a poor family relying on their racehorse to make their fortune in a race on New Year's Day. Unfortunately, the horse is stolen and the kids, with the help of a friendly aborigine, have to track it down. The movie was a big hit, and would become a festive favourite in Oz.
As Nicole continued her education at the Australian Theatre For Young People in Sydney (to which she'd later donate $100,000), and the St Martin's Youth Theatre in Melbourne (her studies concentrated on voice, production and theatre history), the parts kept coming. She appeared as a High School track star learning there's more to life than athletics in the TV series Winners, on film in the amusing romp BMX Bandits, and in a video for Pat Wilson's Bop Girl. Then, at 17, there was a Disney production, the TV serial Five Mile Creek, a family-orientated affair about the wild Aussie West. Shooting five days a week for seven months, this allowed Kidman to gain vital confidence before the camera.
Now there was a blow, as Janelle was diagnosed with cancer. Nicole took time off to take a massage course in order to give her mum physical therapy. Her family's efforts helped bring about Janelle's recovery. Back at work, Nicole scored five parts in quick succession, including Wills & Burke, a lampoon of historical epics, the futuristic Nightmaster, and Windrider, about a kid who builds a hi-tech surfboard in order to snatch the World Championship, then falls in love with Nicole. Tough break. Kidman herself fell in love on Windrider - with actor Tom Burlinson, who she'd see for three years (she'd later date another actor, Marcus Graham).
Next came the breakthrough. Kidman won a meaty role in the miniseries Vietnam as a gawky Sixties schoolgirl protestor who evolves into a freethinking Seventies activist, the series covering the activities of Aussie troops in Vietnam (many of them social and seedy) as well as the public and political furore back home. In the meantime, Kidman found her own flat, cooking and cleaning for herself for the first time. The series was produced by the Kennedy-Miller partnership, who'd broken big with Mad Max, and was written by Terry Hayes, who'd penned Mad Max 2 and 3. Hayes in particular was captivated by Kidman's performance, especially a scene where Kidman is on a radio show, complaining about conscription, when her brother, a returning vet, calls in, causing her to break down. Kidman herself was impressed - now was when she really decided to become a career actress.
So moved was Hayes that, apparently, he was inspired to dive into a new project, an adaptation of Dead Calm. This had begun life as a Charles Williams novel in 1963. It had been picked up by Orson Welles who, in 1969, attempted to film it (as The Deep) with Laurence Harvey and Jeanne Moreau. But Harvey died while on location so the project was shelved, with Welles' widow refusing to sell the rights to any Hollywood studio as she believed they had treated her late husband so shabbily. Eventually, she sold to Kennedy-Miller, and they brought in Hayes. Initially, thoughts were of hiring Sigourney Weaver or Debra Winger for the part of Sam Neill's wife, held hostage aboard a yacht by a psychotic Billy Zane. But Hayes kept banging on about Kidman and, despite the fact that the character was supposed to be 30+ and Nicole was but 19, director Phillip Noyce (later to helm Patriot Games and The Bone Collector) relented.
Kidman threw herself into the part, arriving on location a month before shooting in order to learn how to sail the 80-foot yacht. She studied posture and voice techniques to appear older, and met mothers who, like her character, had lost children. Then production began, with the team spending three months at work, mostly at sea off the Great Barrier Reef. On shore breaks, Nicole would take Neill to the local rough-house night-club, wowing him with the freaky dances she'd learned for Vietnam.
Dead Calm did it for Nicole. Vietnam had won her an Australian Film Institute Award and an American agent and now there something genuinely meaty to work with. While at a film festival in Japan, Nicole received a call from Tom Cruise's people, asking her to come talk about his next project, Days Of Thunder, to be directed by Tony Scott. She had been to America for roles before, believed there was no real hope but, hey, it was a free trip to LA. Meeting Cruise and his people in a hotel conference room, she was embarrassed by the way she towered over the megastar. Now she was convinced she'd be sent on her way. But the next day she was informed she was in. And the height problem? "It doesn't bother Tom, so it doesn't bother us".
So, Nicole spent 5 months down in Daytona Beach as Dr Claire Lewicki, the medic who patches up Cruise's near-dead racing driver and sets him on his way to eventual glory. And there was plenty of media interest. Rumours of an affair were rife, fuelled by the fact that Cruise's divorce from Mimi Rogers came through a couple of weeks before the end of filming. Kidman stressed the romance did not begin till a little later, but she was seen on Cruise's arm at the 1990 Academy Awards, and the couple would marry, in a rented house in Telluride, Colorado, on Christmas Eve that same year.
Suddenly, Kidman was a star, and not simply due to her marriage. The TV miniseries Bangkok Hilton, wherein she played an inadvertent drug mule sent to a fabulously unpleasant jail, was hugely impressive, as was her catty senior school-girl in Flirting (alongside Thandie Newton, later Cruise's co-star in Mission: Impossible 2). Next she was the mysterious moll of Dustin Hoffman's Dutch Schultz in Billy Bathgate, then Cruise's muse and lover, Shannon Christie, in Ron Howard's epic of Irish exile and redemption, Far And Away.
Now, for those who thought Kidman to be simply Mr Cruise and a very lucky lady indeed, came two roles which proved her excellence for good. In Malice, as Tracy Kennsinger, she was fantastically beastly to Bill Pullman, even having her own body parts removed to work her evil scam. Then, in To Die For, she was even beastlier to poor Matt Dillon as she strove to find TV stardom. Her wicked seduction of young Joaquin Phoenix was masterful, her eventual death at the hands of a supremely sinister David Cronenberg uniquely disturbing. For this role, having knocked Meg Ryan out of the picture by calling director Gus Van Sant direct, she spent three days in a Santa Barbara inn, watching nothing but trashy TV, then spoke in a full-blown US accent from the beginning of rehearsals to the end of production. It worked - she won a Golden Globe for her efforts, having earlier been nominated for Billy Bathgate.
The roles kept coming. She played Michael Keaton's pregnant wife, helping him accept onrushing death from cancer in My Life. She was Dr Chase Meridian, devouring Bruce Wayne in Batman Forever (reports said she got the role when Val Kilmer stepped into the Bat-shoes for Keaton and producers felt the original Dr Meridian, Rene Russo, was too old for him). Then came Campion and Henry James' Portrait Of A Lady, where Kidman played Isabel Archer, a wealthy woman whose tricked by wicked Barbara Hershey into marrying the even more wicked John Malkovich. In the meantime, Kidman took time to enrol at New York's Actor's Studio to study The Method. Ever conscientious, that Nicole.
For Kidman, the role was extremely stressful, emotionally speaking. She took six months off then, having been persuaded to join Cruise in Stanley Kubrick's upcoming Eyes Wide Shut (not that she needed much persuading), she took the role of Julia Kelly, the nuclear weapons expert who helps George Clooney track down smuggled nukes in the fast and furious The Peacemaker. A big deal, this, as it was the movie that launched Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks. She also managed to squeeze in the witchy comedy, Practical Magic, with Sandra Bullock. And, once Eyes Wide Shut's incredibly extended shoot was done, she blew away theatre audiences in London and on Broadway, with her performances in The Blue Room, directed by American Beauty's Sam Mendes, where she briefly appeared naked. Unsurprisingly, the production was a sell-out.
Eyes Wide Shut was a big media event, though many considered it cold and slow (despite the supposedly red-hot trailer). Kubrick himself would die soon after, but all seemed well in Camp Cruise. The couple had adopted two children - daughter Isabella Jane and son Conor Antony - and Kidman's quote that "I just feel so fortunate that I have found someone who will put up with me and stay with me" seemed based on a solid foundation. The lawsuits that flew at any tabloids printing sordid rumours seemed also to point to the couple's strength and unity - especially the one against The Star for claiming the Cruises needed a sex therapist to get through Eyes Wide Shut's more physical scenes.
Yet the marriage wasn't as tight as we all thought, Tom and Nicole separating in February, 2001, with Cruise quickly taking up with Penelope Cruz. The couple said very little about it publicly, but her professional connection to Cruise will be noted for some time to come. Before their separation, Kidman starred in weirdo thriller The Others, directed by Alejandro Amenabar (writer of Cruise's forthcoming Vanilla Sky) and co-produced by Cruise himself. The film - slow, surreal and deadly quiet - was an object lesson in how to build tension, with the whole thing being held together by Kidman's extraordinary performance as a fraught young mother living with her kids in a seemingly haunted country mansion while her husband is away at war. It was utterly terrifying, the best horror movie in years, though the greatest mystery surrounding it must be why Kidman, nominated for a Golden Globe, was not similarly forwarded for an Oscar.
She found consolation in an Oscar nod (and Golden Globe win) for Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, filmed earlier, wherein she played beautiful courtesan Satine, plaguing poor poet Ewan McGregor as well as much of aristocratic society. We see Kidman sing (she'd also have a Christmas Number One duetting with Robbie Williams on Something Stupid) and, utilising the training she began 31 years ago, dance. Indeed, so frenetic were the dance sequences that she at one point badly hurt her knee, delaying production. Moving on to The Others without giving the injury time to heal, it flared up again, forcing her to withdraw from David Fincher's The Panic Room after two weeks (though she would provide a disembodied voice on the phone to Jodie Foster). Next would be Birthday Girl, where Nicole played Nadia, the Russian mail-order bride of shy Brit bank clerk Ben Chaplin (how does this guy GET these peachy roles?). Speaking different languages, they nevertheless begin to fall for one another - then some thoroughly dodgy Russian types turn up, claiming to be Nadia's relatives.
After that came The Hours, placing her in what must now be seen as appropriate company. Co-starring with Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, she was up there amongst the finest screen actresses alive. The film was set in three separate times and examined the writing and effects of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, Kidman playing Woolf herself, struggling in a lifeless marriage, growing ever more distant from her family and friends, and finally discovering a dreamt-for freedom in suicide. Radically altering her appearance with a prosthetic nose, she still managed to convey (mostly with her eyes) the flashes of frustration, indignation and love that kept this highly sensitive depressive going as long as she did. A tremendous performance, deserving of the Oscar and Golden Globe she now won.
Nicole claimed that, throughout her marriage to Cruise, she'd been playing a supporting role, pushing his career before hers. And it's clearly true that she was hardly prolific during that time. Now divorced (and having suffered a miscarriage just a month after the initial separation) she set about changing this. Having turned down Jane Campion's visceral In The Cut, which arrived too soon after the Cruise trauma (Nicole would remain with the project as executive producer), 2003 would see her in three productions, beginning with Lars Von Trier's Dogville. This was a real oddity, with many of the sets and props shown only as lines on the ground. Kidman would play a young woman on the run from the Mob during the Depression, who's discovered by kindly Paul Bettany and, through his persuasion, a whole Rocky Mountain village decides to harbour her. The price she pays for safety, though, is hard labour and gross humiliation, for which she will eventually seek revenge upon the townsfolk. She'd move on to The Human Stain, adapted from the Philip Roth novel, where Anthony Hopkins played a college professor who, accused of racism, resigns in order to safeguard a painful secret. As the film discusses divisions in race and class, he now embarks on an affair with Nicole, a semi-literate janitor with a wife-beating ex-husband (Ed Harris, one of Kidman's co-stars in The Hours).
2003 would end with Cold Mountain, Anthony Minghella's American Civil War epic, where Nicole and Jude Law played lovers separated by the conflict, Law going off to fight. Upon the death of her preacher father, city-girl Nicole must now run a farm, aided by local yokel Renee Zellweger and constantly threatened by Ray Winstone, head of the home guard, who fancies her ass and her land. The movie was well-received (Nicole herself being Golden Globe-nominated for the 6th time), but not the huge success anticipated. Most were more interested in the constant flood of stories claiming that an on-set affair between Kidman and Law had broken up Law's marriage. Nicole denied all of them and, keeping up her former husband's habit of litigation, successfully sued British tabloids The Sun and The Mail, donating the proceeds to charity. She also began a relationship with rock musician Lenny Kravitz, which would last into 2004.
Movie-wise, 2004 brought first The Stepford Wives, a remake of Bryan Forbes' 1975 paranoia thriller. Here Nicole played a high-powered but recently sacked TV exec who moves to quiet Stepford with her husband, Matthew Broderick, who'd previously worked as her underling. Both are surprised to find the Stepford women, led by Glenn Close, are crazy-keen to be perfect little wives for their husbands, led by the supremely spooky Christopher Walken. Teaming up with town maverick Bette Midler, Kidman seeks the bitter truth behind the sickly sweet apple pie.
Far more controversial would be Birth, where a 10-year-old boy claims to be the reincarnation of widow Nicole's husband, now 10 years gone. Having finally entered a new relationship, she's frightened, shocked, hurt but eventually convinced, now facing the terrible problems of continuing her marriage in such taboo circumstances, particularly when she's threatened with police action. It was creepy stuff, but also sophisticated and intelligent, seriously questioning the audience in the way that movies should. The year would also see a reunion of sorts with her Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann when she appeared in a 2-minute super-ad for Chanel No 5, having signed with the company in 2003 for a reported $7.5 million (around half of what she was now accustomed to receiving for a movie role).
2005 would bring a raft of new productions, with Kidman continuing to deliberately vary her parts. Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter would be an action thriller which saw her as a worker at the UN who overhears a plot to assassinate an African leader and, with the help of Sean Penn's federal agent, struggles to foil the would-be perpetrators. Then would come a big screen adaptation of the hit TV series Bewitched, where she'd take the Elizabeth Montgomery role as Samantha, a powerful witch (her first since Practical Magic) who falls for doofus Will Ferrell and, against the wishes of her family and gifted sisters, decides to become a suburban housewife. She'd also play beside Ferrell in The Producers, a filmed version of the successful Broadway update of Mel Brooks' classic. Here she'd appear as Ulla, secretary to the scheming Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, singing the immortal If You've Got It, Flaunt It and acting as Broderick's love interest (her character having been beefed up from the buxom, ditzy original). She'd been offered and instantly accepted the part when filming The Stepford Wives with Broderick.
Beyond these, there was the serially postponed American Darlings, where she and Jennifer Lopez played swing musicians in the late Thirties, where the male- and white-dominated scene forced women, blacks and Latinos to play the same underground venues. WW2 would then bring them overground as the authorities sought to raise public spirits, and Kidman's band ends up at the Apollo, in competition with the Count Basie Orchestra. Also on the cards was the long-anticipated Eucalyptus, a magical-realist tale that would unite Nicole with those other Antipodean heavyweights, Russell Crowe and Geoffrey Rush.
Cruise may be gone, yet Nicole Kidman's still very much on the up. Can anything stop this Aussie firebrand, famed for her tinkling laugh, self-deprecating humour and crusading work on behalf of abused children? Perhaps only the humble bee - to which she is painfully allergic.

Stephen Edwin King

Stephen Edwin King (born 21.09.1947) - American author.

Stephen Edwin King is an American author best known for his bestselling horror novels. King was the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In many ways Stephen has changed the movie and book industry forever. he has influenced many currently famous writers.
King evinces a thorough knowledge of the horror genre, as shown in his nonfiction book Danse Macabre, which chronicles several decades of notable works in both literature and cinema. He has also written stories outside the horror genre, including the novella collection Different Seasons, The Green Mile, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Stand, Hearts in Atlantis and his magnum opus The Dark Tower series. In the past, Stephen King has written under the pen names Richard Bachman and (once) John Swithen.
When King was three years old, his father, Donald Edwin King, deserted his family. His mother, Nellie Ruth Pillsbury, raised King and his adopted older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to Ruth's home town of Durham, Maine but also spent brief periods in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut.
As a child, King witnessed a gruesome accident - one of his friends was caught on a railway track and struck by a train. It has been suggested that this could have been the inspiration for King's dark, disturbing creations, though King himself dismisses the idea.
King attended Durham Elementary School and Lisbon Falls High School.
King has been writing from a young age. When in school, he wrote stories based on movies he had seen recently and sold them to his friends. This was not popular among his teachers, and he was forced to return his profits when this was discovered. The stories were copied using a mimeo machine that his brother David used to copy a newspaper, Dave's Rag, which he self-published. Dave's Rag was about local events, and King would often contribute. As a young boy, King was an avid reader of EC's horror comics, which provided the genesis for his love of horror. He loved reading Tales from the Crypt.
His first published story was "In a Half-World of Terror" (retitled from "I Was a Teen-Age Grave-robber"), published in a horror fanzine issued by Mike Garrett of Birmingham, Alabama.
From 1966 to 1971, King studied English at the University of Maine at Orono. At the university, he wrote a column titled "King's Garbage Truck" in the student newspaper, the Maine Campus. He also met Tabitha Spruce; they married in 1971. King took on odd jobs to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry. He used the experience to write the short story "The Mangler" and the novelette "Roadwork"(as Richard Bachman). The campus period in his life is readily evident in the second part of Hearts in Atlantis.
After finishing his university studies with a Bachelor of Arts in English and obtaining a certificate to teach high school, King taught English at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. During this time, he and his family lived in a trailer. He wrote short stories (most were published in men's magazines) to help make ends meet. As told in the introduction in Carrie, if one of his kids got a cold, Tabitha would joke, "Come on, Steve, think of a monster." King also developed a drinking problem which stayed with him for over a decade.
During this period, King began a number of novels. One of his first ideas was of a young girl with psychic powers. However, he grew discouraged, and threw it into the trash. Tabitha later rescued it and encouraged him to finish it. After completing the novel, he titled it Carrie, sent it to Doubleday, and more or less forgot about it. Later, he received an offer to buy it with a $2,500 advance (not a large advance for a novel, even at that time). Shortly after, the value of Carrie was realized with the paperback rights being sold for $400,000 (with $200,000 of it going to the publisher). Soon following its release, his mother died of uterine cancer. His Aunt Emrine read the novel to her before she died.
In On Writing, King admits that at this time he was consistently drunk and that he was an alcoholic for well over a decade. He even admits that he was intoxicated while delivering the eulogy at his mother’s funeral. "I think I did a pretty good job, considering how drunk I was at the time." (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft) He states that he had based the alcoholic father in The Shining on himself, though he did not admit it (even to himself) for several years.
Shortly after the publication of The Tommyknockers, King's family and friends finally intervened, dumping his trash on the rug in front of him to show him the evidence of his own addictions.[citation needed] As King related in his memoir, he sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.
King spends winter seasons in an oceanfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Florida. Their three children, Naomi Rachel, Joseph Hillstrom King (who appeared in the film Creepshow), and Owen Phillip, are grown and living on their own.
Both Owen and Joseph are writers; Owen's first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories was published in 2005. The first collection of stories by Joe Hill (Joseph's pen name), 20th Century Ghosts, was published in 2005 by PS Publishing in a very limited edition, winning the Crawford Award for best new fantasy writer, together with the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Fiction Collection. Tom Pabst has been hired to adapt Hill's upcoming novel, Heart-Shaped Box, for a 2007 Warner Bros release.
King's daughter Naomi is a Reverend in the Unitarian Universalist Church in Utica, New York, where she lives with her partner.
In 2002, King announced he would stop writing, apparently motivated in part by frustration with his injuries, which had made sitting uncomfortable, and reduced his stamina.
"I'm writing but I'm writing at a much slower pace than previously and I think that if I come up with something really, really good, I would be perfectly willing to publish it because that still feels like the final act of the creative process, publishing it so people can read it and you can get feedback and people can talk about it with each other and with you, the writer, but the force of my invention has slowed down a lot over the years and that's as it should be. I'm not a kid of 25 anymore and I'm not a young middle-aged man of 35 anymore — I'm 55 years old and I have grandchildren, two new puppies to house-train and I have a lot of things to do besides writing and that in and of itself is a wonderful thing but writing is still a big, important part of my life and of everyday."
Since 2003, King has provided his take on pop culture in a column appearing on the back page of Entertainment Weekly, usually every third week. The column is called "The Pop Of King", a reference to "The King of Pop", Michael Jackson.
In October 2005, King signed a deal with Marvel Comics, to publish a seven-issue, miniseries spinoff of The Dark Tower series called The Gunslinger Born. The series, which focuses on a young Roland Deschain, is plotted by Robin Furth, dialogued by Peter David, and illustrated by Eisner Award-winning artist Jae Lee. The first issue was published on February 7, 2007, and because of its connection with King, David, Lee, and Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada appeared at a midnight signing at a Times Square, New York comic book store to promote it. The work had sold over 200,000 copies by March 2007.
In June 2006, King appeared on the first installment of Amazon Fishbowl, a live web-program hosted by Bill Maher.
King, a long time supporter of small publishing, has recently allowed the publication of two past novels in limited edition form. The Green Mile and Colorado Kid will receive special treatment from two small publishing houses. Both books will be produced and be signed by both King and the artist contributing work to the book. Half of King's published work has been re-published in limited (signed) edition format.
On February 14, 2007, Joblo.com announced that plans were underway for Lost creator J. J. Abrams to do an adaptation of King's epic Dark Tower series.
King will soon publish the novel Blaze, which was written in the early '70s, under his long-time pseudonym Richard Bachman. He is also finishing the novel Duma Key and writing a play with John Mellencamp titled Ghost Brothers Of Darkland County.
On April 20, 2007, Entertainment Weekly asked King if he felt there was a correlation between Seung-Hui Cho's writing and the Virginia Tech massacre. King stated, "Certainly in this sensitized day and age, my own college writing would have raised red flags, and I'm certain someone would have tabbed me as mentally ill because of them" and "Cho doesn't strike me as in the least creative, however. Dude was crazy. Dude was, in the memorable phrasing of Nikki Giovanni, 'just mean.' Essentially there's no story here, except for a paranoid a--hole who went DEFCON-1." King felt that Cho's work had issues because of its themes and the lack of writing ability and a meaningful story.

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (30.12.1865 – 18.01.1936) - English writer.

Rudyard Kipling was a famous English writer, poet and novelist. His best works are considered to be “The Jungle Book” and “Mandalay”. He also had honorary degrees of many world-famous universities, including Oxford, Durham and Cambridge. The writer was born on December 30th, 1865, in Bombay, in the family of arts school professor. He was supposedly named after the Lake Rudyard where his parents met each other. His early years were spent in exotic India, but at the age of five he was sent to study in England. The owner of the private school where he lived and studied was very mean and often punished him. As a result, Rudyard suffered from insomnia.
When he was 12, he was sent to study at a private school in Devon, so that he could continue his education in a prestigious military academy afterwards. The headmaster of this school was his father’s friend and the person who encouraged Rudyard to love literature. Due to poor eyesight, he wasn’t accepted at the military academy, so he had to choose another path. Having read his school stories, his father found a job of a journalist for him in British India. Thus, in 1882, he returned to India. Apart from being a journalist, Kipling wrote short stories and poems in his free time. Most of these works were then published in the local newspaper.
In the mid 1880s, he decided to travel along the USA and Asia to write travel essays. His works rapidly gained popularity and soon he could publish six books full of interesting stories. Finally, he settled in England, where he published the first novel. In London, the writer met a young American publisher Wolcott Balestier who helped him to work on the story “Naulakha”. In 1892, Balestier died of typhus and Rudyard decided to marry his sister. Together they spent a honeymoon in the USA and stayed there for the next four years. At that time, Kipling began writing stories for children - “The Jungle Book”. When they returned to England, he published the “Brave Explorers” novel.
During their stay in the US, the couple had two daughters, but one of them soon died of pneumonia. In the wake of her death he concentrated on collecting material for more stories about children. In 1901, the writer published one of his best books called “Kim”, and a year later “Just So Stories for Little Children”. Meanwhile, he bought a country house in Sussex, where he stayed till the end of his life. Along with literary work he got involved in politics. He wrote about the approaching war with Germany and supported the Conservative Party. During the World War I he lost his eldest son and his wife was gone to work for the Red Cross. His literary career became less intense and continued till early 1930s. The writer died in January of 1936 at the course of long-term gastritis. He was buried in London, in Westminster Abbey.

Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton (19.08.1946) - American President.

Clinton, Bill (William Jefferson Clinton), 1946–, 42d President of the United States (1993–2001), was born town Hope, state Arkansas. His father died before he was born, and he was originally named William Jefferson Blythe 3th, but after his mother remarried, he assumed the surname of his stepfather. After graduating from Georgetown Univ. (1968), attending Oxford Univ. as a Rhodes scholar (1968–70), and receiving a law degree from Yale Univ. (1973), Clinton returned to his home state, where he was a lawyer and (1974–76) law professor. In 1974 he was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. Two years later, he was elected Arkansas's attorney general, and in 1978 he won the Arkansas governorship, becoming the nation's youngest governor. Defeated for reelection in 1980, he regained the governorship in 1982 and retained it in two subsequent elections. Generally regarded as a moderate Democrat, he headed the centrist Democratic Leadership Council from 1990 to 1991.
In 1992, Clinton won the Democratic presidential nomination after a primary campaign in which his character and private life were repeatedly questioned and, with running mate Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, went on to win the election, garnering 43% of the national vote in defeating Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush and independent H. Ross Perot. By his election, he became the first president born after World War II to serve in the office and the first to lead the country in the post–cold war era.
In his first year in office, Clinton won passage of a national service program and of tax increases and spending cuts to reduce the federal deficit. He also proposed major changes in the U.S. health-care system that ultimately would have provided health-insurance coverage to most Americans. Clinton was unable to overcome widespread opposition to changes in the health-care system, however, and in a major policy defeat, failed to win passage of his plan. After this failure, his proposed programs were never as sweeping. The president's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom he married in 1975, played a more visibly active role in her husband's first term than most first ladies; she was particularly prominent in his attempt to revamp the health-care system.
After the Democratic party lost control of both houses of Congress in Nov., 1994, in elections that were regarded as a strong rebuff to the president, Clinton appeared to have lost some of his political initiative. He was often criticized for vacillating on issues; at the same time, he was embroiled in conflict with sometimes radically conservative Republicans in Congress, whose goals in education, Medicare, and other areas often were at odds with his own. In 1995 and 1996, congressional Republicans and Clinton clashed over budget and deficit-reduction priorities, leading to two partial federal government shutdowns. Perceived as the victor in those conflicts, Clinton regained some of his standing with the public. Allegations of improper activities by the Clintons relating to Whitewater persisted but were not proved, despite congressional and independent counsel investigations.
In 1997, Clinton and the Republicans agreed on a deal that combined tax cuts and reductions in spending to produce the first balanced federal budget in three decades. The president now seemed to have mastered the art of employing incremental, rather than large-scale, governmental action to effect change, leaving the Republicans, with their announced mandate for fundamental change, to appear visionary and extreme. Having taken the center, and with stock markets continuing to boom and unemployment low, Clinton enjoyed high popularity, presiding over an enormous national surge in prosperity and innovation.
At the beginning of 1998, however, ongoing investigations into his past actions engulfed him in the Lewinsky scandal, and for the rest of the year American politics were convulsed by the struggle between the president and his Republican accusers, which led to his impeachment on Dec. 19. He thus became the first elected president to be impeached (Andrew Johnson, the only other chief executive to be impeached, fell heir to the office when Pres. Lincoln was assassinated). It was apparent, however, that much of the public, while fascinated by the scandal, held the impeachment drive to be partisan and irrelevant to national affairs. In Jan., 1999, two impeachment counts were tried in the Senate, which on Feb. 12 acquitted Clinton. In the year following, U.S. domestic politics returned to something like normality, although the looming campaign for the 2000 presidential election began to overshadow Clinton's presidency. During both his terms Clinton took an active interest in environmental preservation, and by 2000 he had set aside more than three million acres (1.25 million hectares) of land in wilderness or national monuments, protecting more acreage in the lower 48 states than any other president.
The late 1990s saw a number of foreign-policy successes and setbacks for President Clinton. He continued to work for permanent peace in the Middle East, and his administration helped foster accords between the Palestinians and Israel in 1997 and 1999, but further negotiations in 2000 proved unsuccessful. Iraq's Saddam Hussein increased his resistance to UN weapons inspections in the late 1990s, leading to U.S. and British air attacks in late 1998; attacks continued at a lower level throughout much of 1999 while the issue of weapons inspections remained unresolved. In Apr.–June, 1999, a breakdown in an attempt to achieve a negotiated settlement in Kosovo sparked a 78-day U.S.-led NATO air war that forced Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro) to cede control of the province, but not before Yugoslav forces had made refugees of millions and killed several thousand.
The second term of Clinton's presidency saw a pronounced effort to use international trade agreeements to foster political changes in countries throughout the world, including Russia, China (with whom he established normal trade relations in 2000), Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia. While global trade flourished, Clinton's hopes that trade would lead to democratization and improved human rights policies in a number of countries by and large failed to be realized. In 1997 the Clinton administration had won ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention (signed 1993), but it refused to join in a major international treaty banning land mines. The Republican-dominated Senate narrowly rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in late 1999 in a major policy setback; in late 2000, Clinton made the United States a party to the 1998 Rome Treaty on the establishment of an International Criminal Court for war crimes.
In the course of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign, Clinton vigorously advocated on behalf of his wife, Hillary Clinton. Some worried that as an ex-president, he was too active on the trail, too negative to Clinton rival Barack Obama, and alienating his supporters at home and abroad. Many were especially critical of him following his remarks in the South Carolina primary, which Obama won. Later in the 2008 primaries, there was some infighting between Bill and Hillary's staffs, especially in Pennsylvania. Based on Bill's remarks, many thought that he could not rally Hillary supporters behind Obama after Obama won the primary. Such remarks lead to apprehension that the party would be split to the detriment of Obama's election. Fears were allayed August 27, 2008, when Clinton enthusiastically endorsed Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, saying that all his experience as president assures him that Obama is "ready to lead".
In 2009, Clinton travelled to North Korea on behalf of two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea. Euna Lee and Laura Ling had been imprisoned for illegally entering the country from China. Jimmy Carter had made a similar visit in 1994. After Clinton met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Kim issued a pardon.
Also in 2009, Clinton was named United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti. In response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Clinton and George W. Bush would coordinate efforts to raise funds for Haiti's recovery.
In 2010, Clinton announced support and delivered the keynote address for the inauguration of NTR, Ireland's first ever environmental foundation.
Clinton actively participated in Barack Obama's election campaign during the 2012 presidential election.

Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain (20.02.1967 - 05.04.1994) - American musician

Kurt Cobain was a prominent American musician, rock singer and guitarist. He was probably best known for the rock-project called “Nirvana”. Born in Aberdeen, Washington, he had many European roots: Irish, Scottish, German, English. His Irish ancestors migrated to Canada in the 19th century and then moved to the USA.
Curt was born on February 20, 1967, in a humble family. His mother was a housewife and his father was a mechanic. However, he had some other relatives who were involved in music industry. For example, his uncle was from the “Beachcombers” band, his aunt played the guitar in various local ensembles. One of his distant grandfathers made a career of a tenor and starred in “King of Jazz” (1930).
He started showing interest in music at a very early age. When he was two he enjoyed singing “Beatles” songs, when he was seven he got his first drum as a present from his aunt. When he was nine his parents divorced and it had a bad impact on him. He became sullen and unhappy. His life was a mess as a teenager. At first he lived with his mother, then he moved in with his father. After his favourite uncle committed a suicide he became even more disturbed.
There were times when he lived at his friends’ place or with relatives. At the age of fourteen he learned to play the guitar. His first teacher was the musician from “Beachcombers”. After graduation from school Curt was often caught drinking or wandering. Once he spent eight days at a cell for trespassing someone else’s territory being drunk. He loved reading and his favourite writers included Leo Tolstoy, J. D. Salinger, Patrick Suskind. The later author’s story about the perfume creating murderer inspired Cobain to write a song “Scentless Apprentice”.
In 1985 he established his first band “Fecal Matter”, which didn’t last. The second band was more successful. Changing several titles, it was called “Nirvana” and in 1988 they released their first single, a year later - an album “Bleach”. The second album “Nevermind” was highly demanded. It brought Cobain’s band not only commercial success, but also world fame. His personal life was connected with Courtney Love. A couple met in 1989, but it wasn’t until 1991 that they started dating. A year later they got married, as Courtney was pregnant.
They daughter Frances was born on August 18, 1992. At that time Curt was already experiencing some health problems. He was known for poor health from the very childhood, but taking into account that he overused alcohol and drugs, it got even worse. In spring 1994 he was hospitalized after an attempt to take over fifty pills of Rohypnol and to wash them down with champagne. He seemed to be ready to undergo the treatment at one of the Californian rehabilitation centers, but at the beginning of April he escaped from the hospital.
On April 8 early in the morning Kurt was found dead in his Seattle house. It was a real shock for his numerous fans. After the cremation his ashes were partially scattered over the river in his native Aberdeen, WA, and partially passed to Courtney. There is an unofficial memorial bench dedicated to Cobain in Viretta park.

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus (1451 – 20.05.1506) - Genoese explorer.

Christopher Columbus was a well-known Spanish explorer of Italian origin. His main expedition took place in 1492, when he opened America for the Europeans. He is still known worldwide as the discoverer of America. Columbus was the first traveler who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the subtropical and tropical belts of the northern hemisphere and entered the Caribbean Sea. All in all, he had made four voyages to America. The explorer was born in 1451 in the Republic of Genoa, which is now the part of modern Italy. His family was rather poor and he had several brothers and a sister. Columbus studied at the University of Pavia. Around 1470 he married one navigator’s daughter. Since then, he participated in maritime trade expeditions. In 1474, he got a letter from his friend geographer saying that India can be reached by a shorter route if they sail west. That information encouraged him to project a sea voyage to India.
Making his own calculations, he decided to go through the Canary Islands. In 1476, the traveler moved to Portugal where he stayed for the next nine years. During that time he visited England, Ireland, Iceland, Guinea and many other places. Around 1480 he addressed the government and Genoese merchants asking them to support his expedition, but there was no response. In 1483, he proposed the same project to the Portuguese King John II, but got the negative response. In 1485, together with his son Columbus moved to Spain. In 1486, he managed to interest the Duke of Medina-Seli by his project. The Duke introduced him to the royal financial advisors, bankers, merchants and his uncle - Cardinal Mendoza, who promoted an audience with Catholic Kings. The Columbus was unwilling to disclose his plans, so the final verdict was unclear. In 1488, he received a favourable response, but without any concrete proposals.
A step forward was made by Queen Isabella of Castile in 1492. The royal couple gave Columbus and his ancestors the title of noblemen and promised to give him the title of Admiral in case his overseas project becomes successful. Between 1492 and 1504 Columbus made four research expeditions, describing all the events in his logbook. Unfortunately, the original journal hasn’t survived. The official date of the discovery of America was the 12th of October, 1492. Columbus with his tree ships and a crew of 120 sailors landed on the island which he named San Salvador. After all his expeditions he returned to Seville. By that time he was already seriously ill. Unfortunately, he couldn’t restore the privileges and rights that granted to him earlier. The explorer died on May 20th, 1506, in Valladolid. The importance of his discoveries was recognized only in the middle of the 16th century.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus (in Polish Mikolaj Kopernik, in German-Prussian dialect Niklas Koppernick) was born on February 19, 1473, at Torun, near the Vistula River in eastern Poland, where his father was a merchant of social standing. In 1491 Copernicus entered the University of Krakуw, where he became interested in the study of astronomy; he probably returned home in 1494 (or 1496). His maternal uncle, Lucas Waczenrode, newly elected bishop of Ermeland, wanted him to enter the canonry of Frauenburg in order to secure lifelong financial independence. While waiting for a vacancy to occur, he was sent by his uncle in 1497 for further training to the University of Bologna, where he associated himself with the German students.
For three and a half years Copernicus studied the Greek language, mathematics, and the writings of Plato; he also became further acquainted with the astronomical thought of the day. In Bologna he also made his first recorded observation of the heavens, an occultation (overlapping, or eclipse) of the star Aldebaran by the Moon on March 9, 1497; the light of the former was shut off by the Moon. The same year he was elected (by proxy) a canon of Frauenburg. He travelled to Rome in 1500 for the great jubilee celebration and may have given informal lectures in mathematics there. In 1501 he briefly visited Frauenburg to claim his post on the cathedral staff, returning promptly to Italy under special leave of absence to continue his studies at the University of Padua. There, enrolled with other Polish students, he studied both law and medicine. Except for a short interruption in 1503, when he was granted the degree of doctor of canon law by the University of Ferrara, he spent almost four years in Padua.
On returning to Poland in 1503, he visited Krakуw and later acted as adviser to his uncle until the latter's death in 1512. Copernicus settled permanently at Frauenburg, where he acted as representative of the cathedral chapter, his medical skill being used particularly in aid of the indigent.
As a result of his studies in Krakуw and Padua, Copernicus may be said to have mastered all the knowledge of the day in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and theology. Copernicus appears to have planned a systematic program of astronomical work. Although he did not make extensive observations, he did enough to enable him to recalculate the major components of the supposed orbits of the Sun, Moon, and planets around the Earth. He published 27 such observations made during the years 1497-1529, and a few others have been found entered in books in his private library. He also published for his uncle in 1509 a Latin translation of Greek verses of Theophylactus, a Byzantine poet of the 7th century AD, and from 1519 to 1528 prepared an exposition of the principles of currency reform for certain Polish provinces; the latter was not published in Warsaw, however, until 1816.
Copernicus' fame as an industrious student of astronomy rapidly increased, and in 1514 he was invited to give his opinion on calendar reform, which was then being considered by the Lateran Council, a general meeting of the church authorities. He refused to express any firm views, for he felt that the positions of the Sun and Moon were not known with sufficient accuracy to permit a proper reassessment.
Yet, as his studies progressed, Copernicus became increasingly dissatisfied with the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. He was not alone in this dissatisfaction; indeed, he himself said that the many divergent views prevalent in his day gave him cause for profound thought. Ptolemy's system, which contained not only original work but also a synthesis of the views of previous Greek philosophers, was basically geocentric and circular in conception. By the 16th century this geocentric interpretation of the heavens had become firmly entrenched in astronomical thought, virtually as an article of faith. Although certain Greek philosophers had suggested, as far back as the 3rd century BC, that the Sun--and not the Earth--was the centre of the universe, their ideas had not been widely accepted. Difficulties had arisen when ancient astronomers sought to account for the accumulated observations of the Sun, Moon, and planets. Accordingly, Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD had devised an elaborate geocentric model of the heavens composed of large circles, called deferents, and small circles, called epicycles. Each planet rode on the circumference of an epicycle, the centre of which revolved on the deferent. Ptolemy used this system to account for observed irregularities of the planets, such as changes in brightness, and particularly for their puzzling retrogressive motions, when they seemed to stop and move backward and forward in a loop. Moreover, to account for observed variations in velocity, Ptolemy introduced the equant, which was an imaginary point in space where uniform, circular speed would indeed be observed. This system enabled astronomers to account for the phenomena and to make predictions. As observations in succeeding centuries became more accurate, however, it became increasingly difficult to compute the future positions of the heavenly bodies, and much of the flexibility and elegance of the Ptolemaic system was thereby lost.
Copernicus concluded that, in view of the many circles and their displacements from the center of the Earth that the Ptolemaic system required to account for the observed motions of heavenly bodies, a simpler, alternative explanation might be possible. In consequence, he read the works of many original Greek authors and found that, indeed, heliocentric ideas had been suggested. The idea of a moving Earth seemed absurd at first, but, when Copernicus applied this assumption, the result was an aesthetically superior, although not much simpler, system, even though, as might be expected, he still believed that the planets moved with uniform circular motion. After many years of mathematical calculations, he became convinced that his new idea was true, yet he made no attempt to publish.
From about 1510 to 1514, Copernicus prepared a short manuscript to summarize his new idea, De hypothesibus motuum coelestium a se constitutis commentariolus ("A Commentary on the Theories of the Motions of Heavenly Objects from Their Arrangements"), which he privately circulated among friends in 1514. Its main points were that the apparent daily motion of the stars, the annual motion of the Sun, and the retrogressive behaviour of the planets result from the Earth's daily rotation on its axis and yearly revolution around the Sun, which is stationary at the centre of the planetary system. The Earth, therefore, is not the centre of the universe but only of the Moon's orbit. As the years passed, he developed his argument with diagrams and mathematical calculations. Lectures on the principles expounded in the Commentariolus were given in Rome in 1533 before Pope Clement VII, who approved, and a formal request to publish was made to Copernicus in 1536. But he continued to hesitate. It was only through the efforts of his friends--in particular, his pupil and disciple Georg Joachim Rhoticus, who studied with him for two years--that he finally published his work. In 1540 Rhoticus was permitted to take the completed manuscript to Nurnberg, Germany, for printing. Because of opposition from Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, and other reformers, Rhuticus left Nurnberg and went to Leipzig, where he passed on the task of publication to Andreas Osiander. Apparently fearing criticism of a treatise that proposed an annual motion of the Earth around a stationary Sun, Osiander, on his own responsibility, inserted a preface emphasizing that the hypothesis of a stationary Sun was only a convenient means for simplifying planetary computations.
A careful examination of the text makes it clear, however, that Copernicus had really come to believe in the heliocentric system--rather, heliostatic, since he placed the Sun at some distance from the centre--as a true picture of the universe. He wrote On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, in six sections, as a mathematical reinterpretation of Ptolemy. He wished to provide an alternative computational scheme that would make possible more accurate predictions that would be used in calendar reform and eclipses, and that would, at the same time, explain the troublesome variations of brightness, retrogressions, and velocity with a simpler geometric system of points and circles.
In the first section, Copernicus gave some basic mathematical rules, countered the old arguments about the fixity of the Earth, and discussed the order of the planets from the Sun. He could no longer accept the old arrangement--Earth, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn--since this had been a consequence of a geocentric system. He found it necessary to adapt it to his heliocentric system and adopted the following order from the stationary Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth with the Moon orbiting around it, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In the second section, Copernicus applied the basic mathematical rules of the previous section to the apparent motions of the stars and planets, and attributed the motion of the Sun to the motion of the Earth. The third section contains a mathematical description of the Earth's motion, including the precession of the equinoxes, which is caused by the gyration of the Earth's axis. Sections four, five, and six deal with the motions of the Moon and of the five remaining planets.
In his heliocentric theory, Copernicus found himself able to describe the movements of the Moon and planets in a more elegant way than Ptolemy in his geocentric system. To fit the observations, Ptolemy had been forced to offset the centres of regular motion a slight way from the centre of the Earth, and this Copernicus believed to conflict with the basic rule of true circular motion. In De revolutionibus the centres all lay at the centre of the Sun, but, because Copernicus still adopted circular motions at an unvarying speed, his system proved to be virtually as complex as Ptolemy's. Nevertheless, Copernicus believed that his system was aesthetically more satisfying and that it was a true picture of the divinely ordained cosmos.
A copy of the great work is believed to have been brought to Copernicus at Frauenburg on the last day of his life, May 24, 1543.
The Copernican system appealed to a large number of independent-minded astronomers and mathematicians. Its attraction was not only because of its elegance but also, in part, because of its break with traditional doctrines: in particular, it opposed Aristotle, who had argued cogently for the fixity of the Earth; furthermore, it provided an alternative to Ptolemy's geocentric universe. In Western Christendom both of these views had been elevated almost to the level of religious dogma; to many thoughtful observers, however, they stifled development and were overdue for rejection.
Scientifically, the Copernican theory demanded two important changes in outlook. The first change had to do with the apparent size of the universe. The stars always appeared in precisely the same fixed positions, but if the Earth were in orbit round the Sun, they should display a small periodic change. Copernicus explained that the starry sphere was too far distant for the change to be detected. His theory thus led to the belief in a much larger universe than previously conceived and, in England, where the theory was openly accepted with enthusiasm, to the idea of an infinite universe with the stars scattered throughout space. The second change concerned the reason why bodies fall to the ground. Aristotle had taught that they fell to their "natural place," which was the centre of the universe. But because, according to the heliocentric theory, the Earth no longer coincided with the centre of the universe, a new explanation was needed. This re-examination of the laws governing falling bodies led eventually to the Newtonian concept of universal gravitation.
The dethronement of the Earth from the centre of the universe caused profound shock. No longer could the Earth be considered the epitome of creation, for it was only a planet like the other planets. No longer was the Earth the centre of all change and decay with the changeless universe encompassing it. And the belief in a correspondence between man, the microcosm, as a mirror of the surrounding universe, the macrocosm, was no longer valid. The successful challenge to the entire system of ancient authority required a complete change in man's philosophical conception of the universe. This is what is rightly termed "the Copernican Revolution."

Kevin Costner

Kevin Costner (born 18.01.1955) - American actor.

He was born Kevin Michael Costner on the 18th of January, 1955 in Lynwood, California. His father, Bill, was a ditch-digger who was later to service electricity lines for Edison of Southern California. His mother, Sharon, bore two other boys - Dan, who was born in 1950, and another who died at birth three years later. Bill's work made family life somewhat nomadic and, denied a settled upbringing, Kevin became a dreamer, writing poetry. He also possessed a great interest in and affection for American history and the natural wilderness, which would later bring about Dances With Wolves, and which saw him, at 18, construct his own canoe and follow Lewis and Clark's river-route out to the Pacific.
In his teens Costner sang in the Baptist school choir and attended writing classes, specialising in poetry. Also he was keen and adept at most sports, starring at basketball, baseball and football. Again, this early penchant for sport, with all its mythologies and internal and external conflicts, would fuel his later work - like Bull Durham, Tin Cup, Field Of Dreams and For The Love Of The Game.
In 1973, Costner attended the California State University at Fullerton, eventually graduating with a business degree. He immediately married his college belle, Cindy Silva (she would bear him three children - Annie, Lily and Joe), and took a marketing job in Orange County. Throughout his college career though, he'd been studying acting, five nights a week, and he continued to pursue his Hollywood dream in his spare time. Then came a life-changing moment. On a plane returning from Mexico, he found himself chatting to screen legend Richard Burton who advised him that his best chance lay in giving up all other distractions and concentrating on acting full-time. Costner followed his promptings, upped sticks and moved to Los Angeles where, in order to feed himself and his wife, he worked as a truck-driver, a deep sea fisherman and as a guide on bus-tours round the homes of the rich and famous. He also captained the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland, where Cindy would play Snow White.
With his career progressing slowly, he got a very minor part as a frat boy in Ron Howard's Night Shift, a black morgue-set sex comedy that marked the screen debut of Michael Keaton and Shannen Doherty, and also the first time Howard would work with long-time producer Brian Grazer. Financing himself with ad work, he appeared on TV plugging Apple's Lisa computer. Then, at last, came the big break. Director Lawrence Kasdan cast him in The Big Chill, as the poor fellow whose suicide reunites a bunch of radicals from the Sixties. With the film also starring the weighty likes of Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum and William Hurt, Costner was in prestigious company. BUT, horrifyingly, at the very last moment Kasdan decided that the flashback sequences didn't work with the rest of the movie and cut them, meaning Costner only appeared as a briefly-glimpsed corpse.
This was a blow which might have crushed Costner's confidence, particularly as he'd turned down the lead in WarGames (consequently a career-launcher for Matthew Broderick) to do The Big Chill. But Kevin, dedicated to the point of bloodymindedness, persisted. His next appearance was in Testament, a grim, emotionally-charged movie showing the slowly disastrous effect on a small Californian town when a nuke is dropped on San Francisco. As radiation sickness seeps amongst them, the townsfolk can either help each other through this torment, or selfishly seek survival. With Rebecca De Mornay (who broke through that same year opposite Tom Cruise in Risky Business) as his wife, Costner was a young man frustrated by and fearful of this creeping death.
Testament was a thoughtful and intimate portrayal of nuclear catastrophe, so well made that even though it was made for TV its producers decided to give it a cinema run. However, it would be overshadowed by The Day After which, starring Jason Robards and exploring the aftermath of a nuclear strike on a mid-western city, seized the nation's imagination and rode a wave of controversy to become an enormous TV hit. Again Costner persisted, this time taking a small role in Table For Five, as a newly wed on the same cruise-ship as Jon Voight when he attempts to rekindle a relationship with the children he previously abandoned.
Now, at last, he turned the corner. Taking the lead role in The Gunrunner, he played a liquor-smuggling mobster in 1920's Montreal who, being at root a kind-hearted socialist, begins to provide arms for revolutionaries in China. Next came Fandango, where he played one of five Texan college buddies who take a road trip before returning to face the Vietnam draft and all the other goodies 1971 had to offer. The film would mark the breakthrough of director Kevin Reynolds, who'd impressed Steven Spielberg with one of his student shorts and been brought in by the great man to expand it into this Amblin production. Costner and Reynolds would later enjoy/endure one of the most turbulent actor-director relationships of recent times. Actually, they might have begun it earlier as, back in 1982, when Costner was working as a stage manager, he auditioned for another of Reynolds' student films - Proof. It had come down to a shortlist of three, and Costner had lost out.
Now Kevin finally reaped his reward for giving up WarGames. Lawrence Kasdan, feeling he owed the young actor a favour, called again and cast him as a young gunslinger in the feel-good Western Silverado (the importance of Kasdan to Costner's career, like Scorsese's to De Niro's, cannot be over-stated). Here Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover and Costner, as Kline's goofy brother sprung from jail, would play a gang of mismatched cowboys who refuse to bow to corrupt sheriff Brian Dennehy and battle for the cause of righteousness. It was an affectionate, purposefully cliched take on classic westerns and, being the first big budget cowboy film in some considerable time (Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider would arrive the same year), its popularity proved to the industry that the genre was far from dead. Costner, too, would take good note of this and would revisit the 1800s frontier several times in his career. Indeed, he'd use the sets created for Silverado when filming his own Wyatt Earp.
Now, as if to fully repay himself for the loss of WarGames, he took on American Flyers, helmed by WarGames director John Badham. This was another cycling movie penned by Steve Tesich, who'd earlier won an Oscar for Breaking Away, and saw Costner and David Grant as very competitive brothers, both keen cyclists, who may or may not have inherited their father's terminal condition. When doctor Costner discovers Grant has it, he has them both sign up for a notoriously gruelling Colorado bike race where they struggle to out-pedal each other, some mean-spirited opponents and even Death itself. It was what was to become a typical Costner flick - sporty, emotional and high on bloody-minded heroics.
Now Kevin moved on to an incredible run of hits. His natural combination of boyish innocence and moral authority made him an excellent Eliot Ness, leading the good guys against Robert De Niro's Al Capone in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, a role both Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson had turned down. It was a very well-received action piece, but Costner later admitted to being troubled throughout filming. Whereas the other characters were well-rounded figures, giving the other actors a chance to improvise and build, Ness was obsessive and straight as an arrow, leaving Costner no room to move or react in his scenes with the already intimidating likes of De Niro and Sean Connery. In fact, Costner would often be accused of appearing wooden onscreen, even though his roles demanded he be taciturn and inflexible.
After The Untouchables, he scored another hit with the superior thriller No Way Out, directed by Roger Donaldson. Here he played a top-notch Navy guy who's assigned to the personal staff of Secretary of Defence Gene Hackman. Engaging in a hot affair with party girl Sean Young, he discovers that she's also Hackman's mistress then, when she's found murdered, he finds himself being slowly revealed as the main suspect. Now all his loyalties are tested as the net remorselessly closes in.
Many times film-makers have attempted to tap into the enduring popularity of baseball. Few have succeeded. But Kevin Costner now pulled this difficult trick off - twice, in consecutive years. First, 1988 brought Bull Durham where, as Crash Davis, he played an ageing catcher hired by the Durham Bulls to teach discipline to their new, fast but scattergun pitcher, Nuke LaLoosh, played by Tim Robbins. Also helping Nuke mature is Susan Sarandon's Annie Savoy, a sexy, sophisticated fan who each season takes one of the Bulls under her wing and into her bed in the hope of making him a better person and player. At first, she and Crash clash, but gradually they come to recognise a common ground and their feelings for each other.
And it all so nearly didn't come about. In the movie's development, writer and director Ron Shelton had worked closely with Kurt Russell, his intended Crash Davis. But Russell was forced to pull out and Costner stepped in to revitalise baseball movies - a fact Russell graciously noted when he called Costner to congratulate him on the film's success. There could be no doubting the film's effect. In the next few years there were a welter of movies featuring the sport - Major League (times three), A League Of Their Own, The Babe, Cobb. Oh, and best of all was Field Of Dreams, again starring Costner. A modern fairy tale, balanced precariously just this side of Corny, it had Costner as an Iowa farmer who's told by mysterious voices to build a baseball diamond on his land. "If you build it, he will come" they whisper, he being Shoeless Joe Jackson, the baseball star shamed along with the rest of the notorious Chicago Black Sox when the 1919 World Series was found to be fixed. Thus farmer Kevin is being asked to construct a home where death is no barrier to the fulfilment of sweet dreams, a refuge for embattled innocence. He does build it, and they all come.
The Untouchables and those two baseball movies convinced Costner that the American public loves nothing more than to see its land, its favourite pastimes and its generous vision of its own good qualities mythologised onscreen. And he learned that they would accept him as a brave and upright all-American hero, like Gary Cooper or James Stewart. It's a lesson that's brought about his greatest successes, and a few of cinema's worse catastrophes. But first he took a step outside the Costner norm with Revenge, an aggressive little thriller that saw him as a former Navy pilot who goes to visit Anthony Quinn, a Mexican crime lord whose life he once saved. All is hunky-dory till Costner begins an affair with Quinn's wife, played by Madeleine Stowe, and the sneaky couple think they can pull the wool over hubbie's eyes. No chance. Costner is thrashed, Stowe maimed and tossed into a brothel and the cycle of revenge up and running. It was quite effective but actually rather nasty, with none of the characters eliciting any sympathy for their beastly actions (though Stowe clearly didn't deserve her unholy punishment). Very little was seen of Costner's characters' usually high morality.
Now, in 1990, Costner's own vision came to the fore with Dances With Wolves. Penned by Michael Blake, this had been a long time coming. Indeed, back in the early Eighties, having written Stacy's Knights, he'd spoken about just such a screenplay with the film's star Costner and its director Jim Wilson. They'd encouraged him to turn the story into a novel, as that would be easier to sell than a straight screenplay and eventually he'd got around to it, further inspired by the work, attitudes and lifestyle of bohemian couple Viggo Mortensen and Exene Cervenka, with whom he'd been staying. Indeed, he now intended Mortensen to play the titular lead. But Costner and Wilson (who'd now co-produce most of Costner's efforts) could really make this happen, and so took over the reins.
At first it wasn't easy. Costner approached three big names directors, but all wanted to make major changes, most of which would involve cutting down what would be a three-hour movie. Kevin, believing the film's strength lay in the slow building of characters, would not have it and decided to direct it himself, for the first time putting himself under massive production pressure and also turning down a lucrative offer to direct The Hunt For Red October. As star and director, he would personally tell the tale of Dances With Wolves, a Civil War hero who chooses to patrol the western frontier and comes to understand, and even love the ways of the Lakota Sioux.
He did need occasional help, Kevin Reynolds coming in to aid him with the epic buffalo hunt. And he went over-budget, personally putting up the money to keep the production on track. And, for the first time, he suffered accusations that this was a gross vanity project. Kevin's Gate, some called it, as the costs racked up, recalling Michael Cimino's terrible experience with Heaven's Gate a decade before.
Then the movie came out and was an instant hit. Despite its length and its uncompromising use of the Sioux language, audiences flocked to see it. It brought big westerns back into fashion - Clint Eastwood would re-enter the saddle with Unforgiven two years later - and it would convince film-makers that running-time was not a problem for audiences as long as the quality was high. Hence Braveheart, The English Patient, Schindler's List and, in terms of language, The Passion Of The Christ. Costner himself was rewarded with two Oscars, for Best Director and Best Picture (it was the first western to take Best Picture since Cimarron a half a century before), and a nomination as Best Actor, while the film garnered five more gongs.
Next came Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, hugely popular in the UK but then notorious for spawning Bryan Adams' long-running Number One single Everything I Do. Costner came to the project late and immediately argued with director Kevin Reynolds over the accent to be used. Costner, his actorly pride on the line, wanted to go native, while Reynolds figured that, now he was such a big star, he needn't bother. Costner persisted, as Costner always does, but was eventually forced to both concede defeat and take all subsequent criticism (of which there was much) on the chin. If only Keanu Reeves had been similarly advised when it came to Bram Stoker's Dracula%u2026 There was further criticism when rumours began to abound that Costner had demanded that much of Alan Rickman's work be cut, Rickman providing a hilariously evil Sheriff of Nottingham. This was interesting as it brought up a question of loyalty and integrity. Costner understood that to bring a legend to the screen, or to create one on the screen, you have to have a suitably heroic hero. Thus Robin Hood - laconic, manly and determined - could not be overshadowed by a Sheriff so magnificently wicked that everyone rooted for him. Thus, for the sake of the legend, Rickman had to hit the cutting-room floor (thankfully, his part would be mostly restored in later DVD versions).
Actually, this raises another question, about Costner himself. More than any other actor, apart from perhaps Orson Welles, he has been accused of engaging in vast vanity projects, intended to boost his own fame and glory. But if you consider that desire to deal in legends, and the fact that he could more easily get such legends green-lighted by starring in them, surely he has no choice but to make himself look good. He's the hero, after all. And it's not as if he doesn't make serious efforts to deepen his heroes' characters, even to the extent of making them ugly or cruel. His Wyatt Earp and The Mariner in Waterworld are far harder and more interesting than, say, Mel Gibson's William Wallace. And, while we're on the subject, it's worth re-iterating that, were it not for Costner's groundbreaking efforts with Dances With Wolves (a vanity project?), Gibson would probably never have dared to direct and star in Braveheart (not a vanity project?).
After Robin Hood, Costner took the lead in JFK, directed by Oliver Stone, whose Platoon Kevin had turned down five years earlier as he believed it portrayed American soldiers in a negative light (Costner's own brother was a Vietnam vet). Here he played New Orleans DA Jim Garrison, clawing his way through reams of evidence, cover-ups and lies to discover the truth behind the Kennedy assassination. It was a big critical success but, with Garrison being an Eliot Ness straight-arrow kind of guy, his acting scope was once more limited, the plaudits being taken by more flamboyant cameos by Gary Oldman, Joe Pesci and Tommy Lee Jones. Nevertheless, he was nominated for a Golden Globe.
He moved on to The Bodyguard, written in the mid-Seventies by his friend Lawrence Kasdan and originally intended to star Diana Ross and Steve McQueen. Now Costner stepped in as the former Secret Service officer, disturbed by his failure to stop the shooting of Ronald Reagan and hired to protect a pop diva (Whitney Houston). A thriller-come-love-story it was a huge hit, continuing an absurd run of success. Costner would claim and re-claim later that Princess Diana had been in negotiations to appear in Bodyguard 2 prior to her death in 1997. "She wanted the right to reinvent herself", he remarked.
Now it all became more complicated as Costner began to delve into the darker side of an American dream and character that had previously served him so well. In Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World, he starred as Butch Haynes, a criminal who breaks out of Huntsville jail in 1963, kidnaps a kid and goes on the run, pursued by Eastwood's gnarled Texas Ranger. Slowly we learn the depth and origins of Haynes' violence as his relationship with the child grows and Eastwood reveals his guilt at his earlier failure to prevent Haynes' unjust incarceration. It was excellent stuff, and Costner, released from the constrictions of the good-guy hero, delivered a truly impressive performance.
As if liberated by this experience, Costner reunited with Lawrence Kasdan (here director and co-writer) for Wyatt Earp. He could so easily have portrayed the famed lawman as a good man in a chaotic age, an avenging angel of justice. Instead, his Earp was traumatised by early tragedy, a stubborn loner who stumbles into office and uses merciless violence to dominate the towns he controls. He also bullies his family and drives his lover to laudanum addiction. And he's a hero, relentlessly taking on the bad guys at their own game.
It really was a magnificent western, peopled by some great characters, in particular Gene Hackman as Costner's hard-assed father and Dennis Quaid as an infirmed, gentlemanly and psychotic Doc Holliday. Unfortunately, it arrived on the screen several months after Tombstone, a movie telling much the same story with Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp. Thus Costner's film, budgeted at $63 million, produced a US gross of only $25 million. A terrible shame as Tombstone was good, but Wyatt Earp far better.
Now Costner's career would become a real rollercoaster. First, he turned away from epic action with The War, playing a Vietnam vet in 1972 Mississippi who's turned his back on violence and is attempting to rekindle romance with his wife, Mare Winningham (who'd played his addled mistress in Wyatt Earp). Complications arise when his troubled son Elijah Wood is drawn into a confrontation with neighbouring bad boys the Lipnickis.
The War was a moving piece and, after A Perfect World and Wyatt Earp, it continued Costner's finest run of work to date. However, as all three had failed to hit pay-dirt, he was under pressure to pull off another major hit. And so he decided to speculate to accumulate with Waterworld. Directed by Kevin Reynolds, this saw Costner as The Mariner, a kind of floating, mutant Man With No Name in a world almost completely covered by the oceans. Being a major hero, he decides to save some surviving humans from outlaw Dennis Hopper and take them to a mythical Shangri-La named Dryland. It was an interesting and entertaining film, huge in its scope and ambition, with Costner playing The Mariner as wholly introverted and obsessed with the tricks of survival in this harsh environment. Sadly, the finished product was utterly overshadowed by production problems that had set tongues wagging for months before release.
Firstly, there'd been terrible difficulties when storms destroyed many of the sets. The script, too, proved unsatisfactory, Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Joss Whedon being brought onto the set for what he later described as "seven weeks of hell". With costs escalating to $175 million, making it the most expensive movie ever, and with just two weeks to go, Kevin Reynolds walked, leaving Costner to take over the direction. Kevin would later say he had no choice but to take up the reins - he knew that whatever happened he would have to carry the can. Across the industry, the "Kevin's Gate" talk started up once more. More wittily, Waterworld became known as Fishtar, in reference to the Dustin Hoffman/Warren Beatty disaster Ishtar (as an aside, after Ishtar, Town And Country and the gut-twistingly embarrassing Bulworth, surely Beatty , more than Costner, deserves the description Disaster-Man?).
On release, the critics were vicious and the film tanked - though not as badly as is often said. The US box office gross climbed to a usually healthy $88 million, with $255 million taken worldwide. Video, TV and later DVD takings would limit the damage much further. But that was not the story people liked to tell. With Costner having just been divorced from his wife (apparently due to his serial philandering), and having to cough up a cool $75 million, the big story was that, just five years after his Dances With Wolves triumph, the king of Hollywood had fallen heavily from grace.
Immediately, he bounced back. Tin Cup, directed by Bull Durham's Ron Shelton, saw him back on his home ground, on the sports field, as a former college golf champion, now a down-and-out pro on a tatty driving range. When psychiatrist Rene Russo comes for lessons, he decides to woo her away from her boyfriend, Don Johnson, a real golfing champ and Costner's former rival. The US Open might be a suitable testing ground . . .
With Costner back on form as a solid guy who loves his sport and personifies its spirit, Tin Cup put Kevin back on the Hollywood map, and gave him another Golden Globe nomination, something of a resurrection given the burial of Waterworld. He could have taken it easy, consolidated, found another sports vehicle or a tight thriller like No Way Out. Instead, he came back slugging and attempted to create another big-budget legend with The Postman. Leaving nothing to chance, he would direct and star for the first time since Dances With Wolves. And it was another flop.
The problem was not the three-hour length. It wasn't that Kevin went so far in making his hero heroic (the people build a statue of him, for God's sake!) that even his supporters squirmed a little. It was the story - it was so weak. Costner played a stranger in a post-Apocalypse 2013 (mmm, Mad Max-alicious), who saves the good people from the bad people (fine and dandy) by building new lines of communication and thus recreating society as we once knew it (erm) by acting as a postman (no, thanks). The amazing thing was that it was written by Brian Helgeland who'd win an Oscar for LA Confidential that very same year. Helgeland would later claim that Costner had added at least an hour to his script.
Facing another barrage of (this time deserved) bad reviews and released just a week after the monstrously successful Titanic, The Postman fared very badly. Costing $80 million and making just $17 million at the US box office, in terms of percentages it was a failure far worse than Waterworld. The movie cleaned up at the Razzies - though this meant very little as the excellent Wyatt Earp had done the same. Worse, problems in production had caused Costner to miss out on Air Force One, a movie written for him but now a big hit for Harrison Ford. It wasn't looking good. Costner's personal life was now up in the air. Romantically, he was playing the field, being connected to Mira Sorvino, Elle Macpherson, Carla Bruni, Naomi Campbell and Courteney Cox. In 1996, a blood test had revealed him to be the father of Liam, a child by Bridget Rooney.
Perhaps sensing a need to regroup, he returned immediately to feel-good territory. Message In A Bottle, saw him as a widowed shipbuilder who tosses desperate words into the ocean, words which are found by and pique the interest of divorced researcher Robin Wright-Penn. Though a little morose and a tad over-contrived, the movie would at least return Costner to Number One at the box office. Pushing on, he now revisited the baseball diamond with For The Love Of The Game. Helmed by Sam Raimi and concerning an ageing pitcher whose obsessive pursuit of the perfect game may cost him his true love, it should have been a corker. Sadly, it wasn't. Lacking spark and resonance, it gave Costner his first sporting failure and started him on another run of box office turkeys. He would publicly complain that Universal had re-edited the film to gain a PG-13 rating and cut its heart out.
Not that his films were now all bad. Indeed, Thirteen Days, reuniting him with No Way Out's Roger Donaldson, was a reasonable Cold War thriller, reconstructing the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Costner as a special aide to President Kennedy, struggling against warmongering generals up for a nuclear conflagration. 2001's 3000 Miles To Graceland saw him leading a gang of misfits who rob a Las Vegas casino during an Elvis convention, and attempting to out-run both the law and double-crossed partner Kurt Russell. Though Costner played it extra-mean, the movie was still marred by its ultra-violence and the over-stylised work of former music video director Demian Lichenstein. Following this was the unconvincing supernatural thriller Dragonfly (another role turned down by Harrison Ford) which saw Costner as an ER doctor whose pregnant wife is killed in an avalanche in Venezuela. Soon he comes to believe she's trying to contact him from beyond the grave . . .
Thirteen Days, 3000 Mikes and Dragonfly all failed to recoup even half their budget at the US box office. Costner was on a real downer as he'd also been kicked off Beyond Borders due to his constant run-ins with director Oliver Stone, who subsequently left the film himself. And so, as he usually does when he's in trouble, he decided to take full responsibility for his position. Once more he took to the director's chair, and revisited the Wild West with Open Range, a movie in which he would star and for which he personally put up much of the finance. Here Robert Duvall would play a cattle-driver who preaches non-violence and a warm spirituality that impresses his employee Costner, formerly a natural born killer in the Civil War. But bullying rancher Michael Gambon tests Duvall's decency to the max, forcing Costner to defend his boss by any means necessary.
Once more Costner had delivered a classic western and the public reacted well, the movie taking more than double its budget then scoring big as a rental. Now settled with longtime girlfriend Christine Baumgarten, (twenty years his junior, he'd first met her in 1994 when in depression following his divorce, then began the relationship in 1999, being engaged in 2003), Costner was back. He moved on to The Upside Of Anger playing an ex-Major League baseball star who becomes the father figure to an abandoned family of females. With the females comprising Joan Allen, Alicia Witt, Evan Rachel Wood, Erika Christensen and Keri Russell, he had his much-vaunted manliness tested to the full.

Paolo Coelho

Paolo Coelho (24.08.1947) - Brazilian writer.

Paolo Coelho is an internationally-recognized author. He wrote over twenty of bestselling books, which were translated into many world languages. He was born on August 24, 1947 in Rio de Janeiro. Before becoming famous Coelho led a very intense and full of hardships life. As a teenager he went through brutal electric shock treatment in a psychiatric hospital.
Three times he was placed there by his parents for disobedience which they took as madness. Later on, he joined the esoteric underground society. He had experience of being at jail for political reasons. Apart from novels, this Brazilian poet wrote several anthologies, parables and short story collections. However, his most renowned work was “The Alchemist”. This book brought him international recognition. In total there were 300 million samples sold.
His family never supported his wish to become a writer. After graduating from the secondary school he was forced by parents to enter the Law School in Rio. However, Paolo soon left the studies to become a journalist. That’s when the misunderstanding between him and his parents grew deeper and they placed the teenage Paolo at the private psychiatric clinic.
Neither the first course of electric shock treatment, nor the second changed his will and confidence to become a writer. Escaping from the clinic, he wandered for a while and eventually returned home. A year later he joined the movement of amateur theater. Later he was also a part of hippie society. Together with the rock-star Raul Seixas he wrote over one hundred songs. He led a very intense life at that time, as a playwright, a hippie, an actor, a TV producer, etc.
It all ended in 1982 when he met a mysterious stranger in Europe who convinced him to become a pilgrim. He started travelling the world and met his current wife and life partner Christina. In 1988 together with her he undertook the 40-day pilgrimage to the Mojave Desert. Later on he described the events of this trip in the book “Valkyries”.
At the moment Paolo lives and works in his native Rio de Janeiro and occasionally in Tarbes, France. During his literary career he has received numerous prestigious awards. His symbolic and yet realistic style of writing is highly praised by critics. Coelho’s books appeal firstly to the readers’ hearts, not to their minds.

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie (15.09.1890 - 12.01.1976) - English writer.

Agatha Christie (full name Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie) was a prominent English crime novelist and short story writer. She was also the author of the world’s longest play “The Mousetrap”. She was born on September 15th, 1890, in Torquay, Devon. She was the youngest child in the family of wealthy American settlers. She got excellent home education. With the start of the First World War, Agatha applied to work as a nurse at the hospital. She liked this occupation and found it rather useful. Later on, she worked as a pharmacist at the chemist’s and that influenced many of her stories. More than eighty crimes from her fiction were committed by poisoning.
In 1914, during Christmas time, Agatha married Colonel Archibald Christie, whom she admired for several years. They had a daughter Rosalind. This was the time when she seriously took up writing. In 1920, her first novel, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”, was published. For the first time readers met a fictional character Hercule Poirot, who consequently appeared in many other Christie’s books. In 1926, her husband left her, as he was in love with another woman. After this case, she disappeared from the house and nobody could find her. This caused a loud public outcry, as the writer already had lots of fans. She was finally found two weeks later and diagnosed with amnesia. In 1928 Archibald and Agatha got divorced. Later, in her semi-autobiographical novel “Unfinished Portrait” she described the details of her disappearance.
In1930, she met her second husband, Max Mallowan, who was much younger than her. He was an archeologist, so they spent lots of time in Iraq and Syria. These expeditions were later described in many of her stories. She also wrote an autobiography about that period of her life - “Tell me how you live”. In 1956, the talented writer was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her achievements in the field of literature. Starting from 1971, her health began gradually to deteriorate, nevertheless she continued writing. She died on January 12th, 1976, after a short cold. Agatha Christie’s grandson, Mathew Prichard, inherited the rights to some of her literary works, including her most successful play “The Mousetrap”.

Russell Crowe

Russell Crowe (born 07.04.1964) - American actor.

Russell Ira Crowe was born on April 7th, 1964, in Strathmore Park, a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand (he has Maori blood from his mother's side of the family and claims Norwegian ancestry too). If the surname rings a bell, that's because he's the cousin of famous cricketing brothers Martin and Jeff Crowe. The cinema was in Russell's blood. His mother's father, Stan Wemyss, was an award-winning cinematographer during World War 2, while Russell's parents - mother Jocelyn and father Alex - were set caterers (they also ran the occasional inn, one earning such a reputation for boisterousness it became known as The Flying Jug).
Due to his parents' profession and world-view, Russell's life has been fairly nomadic. His family moved to Australia when he was just four, and he didn't live in a house proper till he was fourteen. Precociously confident and fascinated by the film-sets his parents frequented, he began acting at the tender age of six. He played an orphan in the Australian TV series Spyforce, and had a part in The Young Doctors, the hit soap-opera which ran from 1976 to 1981 (he'd later also appear in Neighbours). At age fourteen, he returned with his family to New Zealand (he says his father is "very much a New Zealander") to finish High School, and it was here that he met Dean Cochran, with whom he formed the band Roman Antix - an oddly prophetic moniker, given that Crowe would later achieve worldwide recognition in a film called Gladiator. In his spare time, he still plays rock'n'roll with Cochran, in their band 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts. For their first gig (in Austin, Texas) after Gladiator took off, tickets were changing hands at $500 a pop. They'd also produce a best-selling documentary of their 2000 tour, heavily covering their gigs in London and Austin, and called Texas.
Crowe's first real assault on the Big Time was, in fact, musical. At the age of 16, he was recast as Russ Le Roc, and released a couple of novelty singles, one having the similarly prophetic title I Want To Be Like Marlon Brando. When this burst of fame died out, he took on all manner of jobs to pay his way. He was entertainments manager on a resort island off of Auckland, as well as a waiter, a bartender, a fruit picker, a DJ, a horse wrangler, an insurance salesman and a bingo-number caller - in anyone's books an all-round education. But he had both the acting and the musical bugs, and worked hard to forge a career on the stage. He performed in Grease, Blood Brothers, Simpson J. 202, and an Official Tribute To The Blues Brothers, and between 1986 and 1988, acted in the Rocky Horror Show no fewer than 415 times. Here he mostly played Eddie (Meat Loaf's role in the movie version) but occasionally starred as the transvestite, transexual Frank-N-Furter (Crowe has stated that Tim Curry, again in the movie version of Rocky Horror, is his favourite screen villain).
Though this combination of acting and music was fun, Crowe eventually found himself drawn towards more "serious" and challenging roles. First came Blood Oath, then the coming-of-age drama The Crossing, for which Crowe was forced to change his appearance. Having long before lost a front tooth playing rugby, he'd hitherto refused to have it fixed - until the film's frustrated director agreed to pay for the operation. Crowe's profile now began to rise with Proof (where he gave an excellent performance as a gullible young man befriended by a manipulative, and blind photographer), the comedy The Efficiency Expert (where he played alongside Anthony Hopkins, who said of Crowe "He reminds me of myself as a young actor")), and then his big breakthrough - Romper Stomper. This was a very dark slice of cinema verite, where Crowe played Hando, the head of a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads, warring with the local Asian community. Beatings were frequent and exceptionally violent, and the film caused a major furore, both in Australia and abroad.
More positively, Romper Stomper brought Crowe to the attention of Sharon Stone, then riding high after her notorious showing in Basic Instinct. Stone loved Crowe's "fearlessness" as an actor and demanded that he appear in her next picture, The Quick And The Dead, a cowboy caper to be directed by Evil Dead helmsman Sam Raimi. Indeed, she wanted Crowe so badly she held up production to allow him to finish filming his next movie, The Sum Of Us, wherein he played a homosexual coming to terms with his father and his father's new (and disapproving) girlfriend. Once finished, he went directly on to The Quick And The Dead where, as a sullen, terrifying gunslinger, he proceeded to outshine both Stone and co-star Leonardo DiCaprio. Famously, he also shared some pretty fearless sex scenes with Stone which never made the final cut. They did though appear in an uncut version of the movie, which has done more-than-brisk business in Australia.
From here on, Crowe's star rose remorselessly, his 1992 appearance on The Late Show as Shirty, The Slightly Aggressive Bear becoming an ever-more distant memory. Alongside Denzel Washington in Virtuosity, he played a man possessed by the spirits of multiple multiple-murderers. Then came the hugely acclaimed LA Confidential, where he was mightily impressive as the seedy, wholly realistic Bud White, and Mystery, Alaska where, as John Biebe, he captained a pond hockey team against the mighty New York Rangers. He's described his role in LA Confidential as his hardest yet as, in order to play the teetotal Bud White, he stopped drinking for five months and seven days (he was counting).
The rest is literally screen history with Crowe Oscar-nominated for both his next roles. First he was Jeffrey Wigand, the whistle-blowing cigarette executive in Michael Mann's The Insider (based on Marie Brenner's article the Man Who Knew Too Much). Then he was Maximus, a Roman general who becomes a gladiator after his patron, Emperor Marcus Aurelius, is murdered and he himself is betrayed by the murderer/usurper Commodus (brilliantly played by Joaquin Phoenix). For the latter, he finally won himself a little golden man. Receiving the award, he proudly bore his grandfather's MBE. He also, very deliberately, used his victory to spread hope to others, saying "If you grow up in the suburbs of anywhere, a dream like this seems kind of vaguely ludicrous and completely unattainable . . . this moment is directly connected to those imaginings. And for anybody who's on the downside of advantage and relying purely on courage, it's possible".
Crowe is very much his own man. After Gladiator, he took off on a 4000-mile motorcycle tour of Australia, with a few friends. And he admits to occasionally being TOO MUCH his own man. While filming Proof Of Life, he fell for co-star Meg Ryan, then involved in a hard divorce from Dennis Quaid. "We fell in love", he said later, "It happens, thank God. She's a magnificent person". But Russell did not make time for her and they split, with Crowe later saying "I owe her an apology for not being as flexible as I might have been".
Crowe is now one of the biggest stars alive, turning down the neat part of Wolverine in X-Men (a part taken by fellow Aussie Hugh Jackman), and receiving a hefty $15 million paycheck for his latest project, A Beautiful Mind. Here he played John Nash, a real-life mathematician at Princeton during the Cold War. Desperate to make a significant contribution to his subject and also make a success of his marriage with brilliant scientist Alicia Lardes (played by Jennifer Connelly), he's plagued by schizophrenia. His terrible condition destroys his life, yet somehow he conquers it, rekindling the flames of his broken marriage and winning the Nobel Prize. It's a heavy one, for sure, but Crowe's charisma and performance made it an unlikely $100 million hit AND both he and Connelly won Golden Globes and BAFTAs for their efforts. Both were also nominated for Oscars but, though Connelly was to triumph, Crowe was denied by Denzel Washington.
Then it was on to the $120 million Master And Commander, where Russell and Paul Bettany played naval adventurers, sailing the seas and bumping into the Napoleonic wars, as depicted by the great Australian director Peter Weir.
All that perfectionism seems to have paid off. He's a major Hollywood player. et Crowe cannot abide Hollywood itself, preferring for years to spend his spare time either with his band or on his 560-acre farm, seven and a half hours north-west of Sydney. The farm is run in his absence by his parents and older brother Terry, who occupy the farm-house. When Russell came home, he used to live in a caravan nearby. Since December 2001, though, he's had a home, his own family home. Before leaving for Hollywood, he'd spent four years in a relationship with soap star and singer Danielle Spencer, who appeared in the Crossing and sometimes supported 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts. Stardom attained, he realised that he'd made a mistake and tried to win her back. Luckily for him, she went for it, and the pair moved into his new place in Sydney.
One more reason why, as said, men want to be him and women just plain want him. The guy knows what he wants, works hard to get it and possesses the talent to pull it off. He's truly, unarguably, a star.

Penelope Cruz

Penelope Cruz (born 28.04.1974) - American actress.

She was born Penelope Cruz Sanchez in Madrid on the 28th of April, 1974, her first name being inspired by a song by Joan Manuel Serrat. Her father Eduardo was a retailer, her mother, Encarna, a hairdresser, the family living in the working-class suburb of Alcobendas, about five kilometres north of Madrid. She has one younger sister, Monica, a professional flamenco dancer and TV star (she'd break through in Un Paso Adelante in 2002), and one brother, also younger, named after his father. Penelope was a natural performer, mimicking TV ads as soon as she could walk but, from the age of 4, it was dance that captured her imagination and dominated her life. She spent 9 years studying classical dance at Spain's National Conservatory, including three years of ballet with Angela Garrido, and a period of jazz dance with Raul Caballero. There were also four years of courses with Cristina Rota in New York City. Dropping out of secondary education early, at 15 she beat off the 300-strong competition at an agency audition and became a part-time fashion model. Pursuing drama studies in Madrid, she also appeared in music videos, one being for the popular band Mecano with whose singer, Nacho Cano, she'd have a relationship till 1996.
National fame arrived at 16 when she began to present Kids' TV programmes on Tele 5. There also arrived her first breakdown. Having studied feverishly throughout her pre-pubescence and teens, then stepped straight into pressurised work, she had over-extended herself and, having to take a break to recover from over-exhaustion, paid the penalty. This would happen again, once worldwide fame was beckoning.
Now concentrating on movies, Cruz found her career progressed quickly. First, in 1991, would come an appearance in Rafael Alcazar's The Greek Labyrinth (not released till 1993), an erotic mystery where a woman became obsessed with a disappeared dancer and hired a detective to dig for clues among the man's gay lovers and dodgy acquaintances in Barcelona. Penelope would add to the intrigue as the detective's precocious daughter, entering the fray in the world's skimpiest pair of shorts and revealing a rapacious taste for older men. She'd then move on to Framed, a Lynda La Plante TV thriller (later hacked to movie-size) where Timothy Dalton played a con arrested for his part in a major heist and ostensibly grassing his partners. Holed up in a safe-house, he attempts to cannily corrupt his police guards, Cruz adding glamour as the sensuous Lola, one of playboy Dalton's girlfriends.
These two would have constituted a reasonable opening to any screen career, especially as Penelope was only just 18. But she'd also now appear in two films that would make her a major player in Spain and the darling of art-houses across the globe. In Fernando Trueba's Belle Epoque, set in rural Spain in the 1930s, an army deserter is sheltered by an anarchistic artist and decides to stay on when his benefactor's four beautiful daughters arrive from Madrid. Thus begins a warm and charming celebration of sex and the human body as he seduces the young women one by one, Penelope playing Luz, the youngest, who's innocent but, annoyed at not being party to her more experienced sisters' secrets, would really rather not be.
The film was a huge hit in Spain, garnering nine Goya awards. It would also take the Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film. And there'd be more success with Bigas Luna's Jamon, Jamon, a steamy sex comedy where a rich family ran an underwear factory in a provincial town. When the son of the family falls for Penelope, the lowly daughter of the local brothel-keeper, his mother hires Javier Bardem to seduce Cruz and thus end the shameful affair. But the sneaky mum then herself falls for Bardem and, what with Cruz's lover regularly visiting her prostitute mother on the sly, the film mines a rich seam of outrageous, offensive, sexy and hilarious fun. Both Cruz and Bardem would be nominated for Goyas, while the movie would take the Silver Lion at Venice. The acclaim did much to calm the furore over Penelope appearing topless, which had enraged her boyfriend, Cano.
1994 would bring Fernando Colomo's Allegre Ma Non Troppo where 20-something gay guy Pere Ponce, disapproved of by his father and dumped by his boyfriend, auditions for the Spanish National Youth Orchestra, only to discover that his dad is one of the judges. Enter Penelope as a fellow musician who, with Ponce, wins a place in the orchestra and sets about "curing" the homosexuality that's causing him all these problems, first by sending him to a psychiatrist, then by seducing him and becoming his girlfriend. It was silly, saucy stuff, all the more so when the ambitious Cruz makes a play for Ponce's father.
Next came Life's A Bitch (also known as It's All Lies), another raunchy comedy concerning dysfunctional relationships. Here a series of couples would suffer problems with kids, sex and money, Coque Malla playing a misanthropist who thinks his miserable life will change if he wins the heart of Penelope, the girl of his dreams, only to discover that she sends him completely barmy. She was excellent as the highly-strung Lucia, winning Best Actress at the Peniscola Comedy Film Festival. More serious would be Entre Rojas, set in 1974 Madrid, where she played a well-bred young woman jailed for 10 years for her relationship with a dissident protesting against the brutal regime of General Franco. Once inside, her horizons are broadened by contact with intellectuals and illiterates, friends and killers, and she regains hope and her love of life.
Having briefly reunited with Fernando Colomo and Coque Malla when she popped up as a party guest in The Butterfly Effect, where Malla played a Spanish student who falls for his own uninhibited aunt on a visit to London, Cruz then rejoined her Life's A Bitch director, Alvaro Armero, for Brujas - literally Witches. This would be a thoughtful drama where three women from separate generations are forced to spend a day together in a small town abandoned by its population due to the extreme heat. Contemporary Spanish society would be examined as the women discover their differences and similarities.
Having headlined in both drama and comedy, now came a series of productions marked by their variety and inventiveness, Cruz clearly attempting to widen her range. First came La Celestina, a version of Fernando De Rojas's classic 1499 novel which related the tragic romance of Calisto and Melibea (a precursor to Romeo And Juliet). Here Nancho Novo's Calisto would employ his servants and wise woman Celestina to woo Cruz's Melibea, only for it all to collapse into jealousy and murder. Next Penelope would reunite with Novo and Javier Bardem when she took a cameo in Not Love, Just Frenzy, a notoriously graphic depiction of Madrid night-life, rammed with drug-use and kinky sex. This would be followed by Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health which would track a crazy on-off relationship over three decades. Penelope would appear in an early segment, as a Beatles-mad girl in 1965, who breaks into John Lennon's hotel-room and finds herself hiding under the bed with a bell-boy, while Lennon services a groupie above them. Not to be left out, they get it on themselves, thus beginning the aforementioned sporadic 30-year affair.
1997 would bring a small role in the Danish drama A Corner Of Paradise, starring Samuel Froler and set in the 1950s. Here Froler would play a Swedish botanist and early environmentalist, working on research in Costa Rica, who realises that both the forests and indigenous peoples are being gradually eradicated by Agent Orange-spraying land barons. Romantic complication would be added by Froler's relationships with his girlfriend and with Penelope, playing the daughter of one of said barons. Then, having produced Jamon, Jamon with Bigas Luna, one of Spain's great maverick directors, she moved on to the grand-daddy of them all - Pedro Almodovar - then infamous for his Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! Live Flesh, again seeing her cast beside Javier Bardem, would explore the complexities of love in a tale of betrayal, adultery, violence and unrequited desire, with Cruz playing the main protagonist's mother, a doomed prostitute we see in flashback as she gives birth to him.
But her big success of that year would be Alejandro's Amenabar's Open Your Eyes, a wild ride of a psychological thriller that saw Eduardo Noriega find what he thought was true love with the stunning Penelope. Unfortunately, his nutty girlfriend has other ideas and causes a car wreck that sees her killed and Noriega terribly disfigured. And then it gets really strange as he wakes up in a prison hospital, clad in a mask, accused of murder and no longer sure what has happened. Has he had an operation to rebuild his face, is he back with Cruz, and why does he keep seeing his dead girlfriend's ghost? Messing with time and minds it was a brilliant movie, fabulously entertaining and very influential, and it would have a very marked effect of Cruz's career.
1998 would be a big year for Penelope, seeing no fewer than five releases. First would come an adaptation of Moliere's Don Juan, following the adventures of an over-sexed nobleman in war-torn 17th Century Spain as he seduces castles-full of women. Penelope would play one of his victims, promised the world but given only a rogering, as would Emmanuelle Beart and Ariadna Gil (Cruz's co-star in Belle Epoque). After this, there'd be Twice Upon A Yesterday, a fantastical London-set romance where Douglas Henshall would play a cad dumped by his girlfriend but given the chance to travel back through time to sets things a-right. Penelope would play a mysterious barmaid who provides a shoulder for him to cry on.
Twice Upon A Yesterday would see Cruz begin a run of predominantly English-speaking movies. Next would come Talk Of Angels (actually filmed back in 1996), based on Kate O'Brien's novel Mary Lavelle and set against the Spanish Civil War. This saw Polly Walker as a betrothed Irishwoman who flees to Spain to work as governess to the three daughters of a wealthy family, then falls for Vincent Perez, playing their older, married brother. Produced by Miramax, this bodice-ripping epic had much in common with Gone With The Wind and Penelope, still extremely youthful in her looks, would somehow manage to convince as Pilar, the eldest and most sophisticated of Walker's charges. She'd then move on to The Girl Of Your Dreams where she reunited with Belle Epoque director Fernando Trueba to tell the true story of a group of Spanish film-makers who fled the Spanish Civil War to work in Germany, only to end up under the beady eye of Goebbels, Minister of Nazi Propaganda. With the team forced to work with German actors, there was plenty of room for comedies of misunderstanding. There was also a sub-plot where Penelope, star of the show (in reality this had been Imperio Argentina) and lover of the director, is forced to shack up with the repulsive Goebbels in order to keep him sweet - an indignity that would at least win Cruz a Goya.
The year would end with The Hi-Lo Country (originally a pet project of Sam Peckinpah), directed by Stephen Frears and Penelope's first Hollywood production. This would involve a bizarre love pentagon in small-town New Mexico just after World War 2, with young cattle driver Billy Crudup falling for a local man's wife, a flighty and adulterous Patricia Arquette. Arquette, though, is soon seeing Crudup's ex-marine buddy, a raucous and macho Woody Harrelson. Penelope would appear as a local good girl and Crudup's pre-war lover, who tries to persuade him that Arquette is nothing but a tramp. Having spent a week as a volunteer worker in Calcutta, Cruz donated her entire Hi-Lo paycheck to Mother Theresa's children's sanctuary (in 1997, she'd also spent two months working in Uganda, along with boyfriend Faiz Ahmad).
1999 would see her back with Pedro Almodovar for All About My Mother, where a woman wrecked by the death of her young son is gradually redeemed by the extraordinary characters she meets, including famous actresses, transvestite prostitutes and Penelope, playing a pregnant nun who runs a shelter. Amazingly, given the quality of Live Flesh and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Almodovar had not been Oscar-nominated since 1988's Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown. He was now, All About My Mother actually winning as Best Foreign Language film.
2000 brought Cruz her first US starring role, and her first major Stateside promotion. In Woman On Top, she played a Brazilian chef in San Francisco whose food and looks make her absolutely irresistible to men but who's cheated on by her husband due to her extreme motion sickness. The film was publicised with posters featuring Cruz naked beneath a scanty covering of chili peppers, and moved her into major pin-up territory. Now it was the Big League as she starred alongside Matt Damon in Billy Bob Thornton's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses. Here dispossessed Damon and friend Henry Thomas would ride into Mexico in 1949, seeking what remained of the Old West. Damon would find work as a horse-breaker for rancher Reuben Blades but would then fall for Blades' foxy daughter Penelope, a taboo-shattering relationship that would see the couple driven apart and forced to face the brutality of familial justice. Rumours were rife that a real-life relationship between Cruz and Damon caused him to split from Winona Ryder, but the pair insisted they were simply very good friends.
Now came the visually impressive Blow where she played Johnny Depp's high-maintenance wife in the true-life tale of smuggler George Jung, helping Pablo Escobar break into the US cocaine market in the Seventies (she came to nickname the defiantly idiosyncratic Depp "Martian"). Then came Captain Corelli's Mandolin, based on the bestselling novel by Louis de Bernieres, where she was the daughter of Greek village doctor John Hurt. First she falls for local fisherman Christian Bale then, when he leaves to fight the Nazis, she's romanced by Nicolas Cage, leader of an Italian holding force. Naturally, this relationship is frowned upon by the townsfolk and matters are made dangerously complicated when the German army arrives.
Next Cruz would return to her homeland for No News From God, where two angels, one good, one bad, were sent to win the soul of a dumbo boxer needed in a battle between Heaven and Hell (Gael Garcia Bernal would play the infernal overlord, Fanny Ardant his heavenly counterpart). The good angel would be Victoria Abril who poses as the boxer's ex, while bad angel Penelope would pretend to be his cousin, a demonic slinkster with a vicious right hook and a penchant for drinking and sensuous lesbianism. Abril has few equals in the sexiness stakes, but Cruz managed to match her, particularly when performing a martial arts dance to Kung Fu Fighting and the movie, combining heists, musical numbers and philosophy, proved to be excellent fun.
Back in America, Cruz's 2001 would end with the most important movie of her career thus far - Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky. This was an out-and-out remake of Amenabar's Open Your Eyes, with Cruz reprising her original role. The major difference was that her co-stars were now Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, with the resultant finances allowing for eye-popping effects, like Cruise running through an empty New York City and a breath-taking car crash. The first part of the movie did not bode well, with Cruise and Cruz involved in a meet-cute so sickly sweet it must surely have offed many diabetic viewers. But soon it settled, and began to capture much of the original's paranoia and weirdness.
Vanilla Sky would change Penelope's life drastically. Not only was it her first $100 million hit, lifting her high up the Hollywood ranking system, it also saw her begin a relationship with Cruise. This would have been high-profile at the best of times, but now, with Cruise having recently split from wife Nicole Kidman, it was a tabloid extravaganza, with Cruz coming off especially badly as the Matt Damon accusations had left her with an undeserved reputation as a man-thief.
Perhaps because of the furore, Cruz now kept her major Hollywood projects to a minimum, instead honing her craft in impressive cameos and European productions. 2002 would see her reunite with Billy Bob Thornton for the comic Waking Up In Reno, where Thornton, Patrick Swayze and their wives Natasha Richardson and Charlize Theron cross the country on a trip to a monster truck rally, on the way discovering the roots of their personal dissatisfactions. Penelope would pop up as a Reno hooker who, taking a fancy to Swayze, would provoke him into realising what he already had. The next year would bring another brief role in Masked And Anonymous, a quite incredible Bob Dylan vanity project where the great man would play - surprise, surprise - a vaguely messianic, hugely enigmatic singer pulled from jail for a benefit concert. Dylan's name would draw a plethora of stars, including Jessica Lange, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer, Jeff Bridges, Mickey Rourke, Christian Slater and Giovanni Ribisi, with Penelope playing the religious girlfriend of Bridges' rock journalist, a massive Dylan fan improbably named Pagan Lace and prone to spouting lines like "I love his songs because they are not precise - they are completely open to interpretation". It was not an embarrassing performance, simply an embarrassing script.
Next Cruz would widen her scope with the French production Fanfan La Tulipe, a Luc Besson re-imagining of the life of the titular and legendary French adventurer, here played by Vincent Perez (earlier Penelope's co-star in Talk Of Angels). The movie would see Cruz reprising Gina Lollobrigida's 1951 role as the fortune-telling daughter of an army recruiting sergeant, who tricks Perez into signing up with promises that he'll enjoy a glittering career and a marriage into royalty. From then on he works towards this prize, with the swashing and buckling at a maximum.
Very different would be Penelope's next Hollywood outing, the stylish psychological horror flick Gothika. Here prison psychiatrist Halle Berry is involved in an accident and wakes to find herself banged up in her own jail and accused of murdering her husband. Cruz would stand out as one of Berry's former patients, now a fellow inmate, a supremely witchy woman who believes she's being sexually abused by Satan (which she rather enjoys) and explains to Berry that, as an inmate, no one will ever believe a word she says.
Stepping far from this high-budget insanity, Cruz now returned to Europe for the Italo-Spanish production Don't Move. Here a surgeon involved in an accident with his young daughter would recall the events of 15 years before when he had a fling with a destitute Penelope, remarkably playing a blowsy, gap-toothed, bow-legged tramp living on a building site. Their relationship, which begins with him raping her (again, she quite likes it, having been raped by her father from a young age) and ends with her pregnant, would allow the movie to examine the nature of parenthood, passion, commitment and the awful finality of the choices we make. Cruz would once again find herself Goya-nominated.
Back in the States, Penelope would join Susan Sarandon in the ensemble cast of Chazz Palminteri's Noel, which tied together the tales of several New Yorkers, each seeking redemption on Christmas Eve. Penelope would play the long-suffering fiancee of cop Paul Walker, unable to curb his explosive jealousy even with private sexy dances and eventually having to postpone the wedding. Walker, meanwhile, is being tailed by a besotted Alan Arkin, who, strangely, believes the cop to be the reincarnation of his own dead wife.
Following this Yuletide oddity, Cruz would finally see the release of the delayed Head In The Clouds, another sweeping romantic epic that would see her reunite with Charlize Theron. This had student Stuart Townsend smitten by notorious free-spirit Theron and, several years later, invited to join her in Paris. Here he finds she's a famous photographer, living with Penelope, a former stripper (and probably whore) who's now her model and lover. Cruz is also training as a nurse to help fight the fascists in Spain and draws Townsend into her idealism as war descends and the friends are tossed about on waves of heroism, espionage, betrayal and death.
Head In The Clouds would see only a very limited release, but still 2004 would see Penelope dominate the headlines as her relationship with Tom Cruise now came to an end. Soon she would be seeing Matthew McConaughey, co-star of her next production, Sahara. Based on the bestselling Clive Cussler novel, this would see McConaughey as Dirk Pitt, an Indiana Jones-type adventurer who's searching for treasure on the Nile. Having saved scientist Penelope from assassination, he's drawn into her investigation into why thousands of North Africans are being driven to madness, cannibalism and death, and together they battle tyrants and billionaire industrialists as they follow clues leading all the way back to the killing of Abraham Lincoln.
The movie would arrive in 2005, another busy year for Cruz. Aside from this epic, she'd see the release of Chromophobia, directed by Martha Fiennes and concerning the destruction of old London society by new American attitudes towards money, power, beauty and success. Another ensemble piece, this would see Damian Lewis suffering at the hands of his manic wife Kristin Scott Thomas and insufferably attention-seeking child. His father, Ian Holm, meanwhile, has had an illegitimate love child by his mistress, Penelope, a whore dying of liver cancer whose social worker, Rhys Ifans, can't help prying into her past and present. And then, as one friend (Fiennes brother, Ralph) lies horribly beaten, another (Ben Chaplin) comes up with a plan that will make him a star but betray everyone around him. It was fascinating, well-made and brilliantly acted stuff.
Following this would come the far more physical exertions of Bandidas (again written by Luc Besson), where Cruz joined her great friend Salma Hayek in 1880s Mexico. With Penelope a European sophisticate and Hayek a peasant, the pair do not immediately hit it off, but eventually become a bank-robbing partnership (Bonnie and Bonnie, if you will) and freedom fighters battling an evil enforcer who's terrorizing a town. The movie would be fast and frenetic, and reminiscent of Louis Malle's Viva Maria!, which had seen Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau involved in Mexican revolution.
Still in the pipeline would be a projected reunion with McConaughey in The Loop, where lonely highway patrolman McConaughey and friendly college librarian Cruz would seek the original owner of a parrot that spouts brilliant philosophical axioms. Then there was a possible return to Almodovar with Volver, involving the relationship between a grandmother, mother and daughter. Being Almodovar, there'd also be ghosts and tango.
Cruz is clearly keen to balance a Hollywood career with work in Spain and the rest of Europe. She's also begun to pace herself better. After filming All The Pretty Horses, she went directly to India to shoot a documentary for the Spanish Sabera Foundation (set up by former boyfriend Nacho Cano) aiming to raise money for deprived children - they've already built a home, a school and a clinic for homeless girls and TB sufferers. On her return she collapsed again, as she had done back at the age of 16. She quit smoking, returned to vegetarianism (she'd earlier been a strict veggie for some years) and began practising meditation. She plans to be around for a long while yet. And who'd bet against it?

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise (born 03.07.1962) - American actor.

An actor whose name has become synonymous with All-American testosterone-driven entertainment, Tom Cruise spent the 1980s as one of Hollywood's brightest shining Golden Boys. With black hair, blue eyes, and unabashed cockiness, Cruise rode high on such hits as Top Gun and Rain Man. Although his popularity dimmed slightly in the early '90s, he was able to bounce back with a string of hits that re-established him as both an action hero and, in the case of Jerry Maguire and Magnolia, a talented actor.
Born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV on July 3, 1962, in Syracuse, NY, actor Tom Cruise led a peripatetic existence as a child, moving from town to town with his rootless family. A high school wrestler, Cruise went into acting after being sidelined by a knee injury. This new activity served a dual purpose: Performing satiated Cruise's need for attention, while the memorization aspect of acting helped him come to grips with his dyslexia.
Moving to New York in 1980, Cruise held down odd jobs until getting his first movie break in Endless Love (1981). His first big hit was Risky Business (1982), in which he entered movie-trivia heaven with the scene wherein he celebrates his parents' absence by dancing around the living room in his underwear. The Hollywood press corps began touting Cruise as one of the "Brat Pack," a group of twenty-something young actors who seemed on the verge of taking over the movie industry in the early '80s. But Cruise chose not to play the sort of teen-angst roles that the other Bratpackers specialized in -- a wise decision, in that he has sustained his stardom while many of his contemporaries have fallen by the wayside or retreated into direct-to-video cheapies.
Top Gun (1985) established Cruise as an action star, but again he refused to be pigeonholed, and followed up Top Gun with a solid characterization of a fledgling pool shark in The Color of Money (1986), the film that earned co-star Paul Newman an Academy Award. In 1988, Cruise took on one of his most challenging assignments as the brother of autistic savant Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. "Old" Hollywood chose to give all the credit for that film's success to Hoffman, but a closer look at Rain Man reveals that Cruise is the true central character in the film, the one who "grows" in humanity and maturity while Hoffman's character, though brilliantly portrayed, remains the same.
In 1989, Cruise was finally given an opportunity to carry a major dramatic film without an older established star in tow. As paraplegic Vietnam vet Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Cruise delivered perhaps his most outstanding performance. Cruise's bankability faltered a bit with the expensive disappointment Far and Away (1990) (though it did give him a chance to co-star with his-then wife Nicole Kidman), but with A Few Good Men (1992), Cruise was back in form. In 1994, Cruise appeared as the vampire Lestat in the long-delayed film adaptation of the Anne Rice novel -Interview with the Vampire. Although she was violently opposed to Cruise's casting, Rice reversed her decision upon seeing the actor's performance.
In 1996, Cruise scored financial success with the big-budget actioner Mission Impossible, but it was with his multilayered, Oscar-nominated performance in Jerry Maguire (also 1996) that Cruise proved once again why he is considered a major Hollywood player. 1999 saw Cruise reunited onscreen with Kidman in a project of a very different sort, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. The film, which was the director's last, had been the subject of controversy, rumor, and speculation since it began filming. It opened to curious critics and audiences alike across the nation, and was met with a violently mixed response. However, it allowed Cruise to once again take part in film history, further solidifying his position as one of Hollywood's most well-placed movers and shakers.
Cruise's enviable position was again solidified later in 1999, when he earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as a loathsome "sexual prowess" guru in Paul Thomas Anderson's, Magnolia. In 2000, he scored again when he reprised his role as international agent Ethan Hunt in John Woo's MI:2, which proved to be one of the summer's first big moneymakers. His status as a full-blown star of impressive dramatic range now cemented in the eyes of both longtime fans and detractors, the popular actor next set his sights on reteaming with Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe for a remake of Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar's (The Others) Abre Los Ojos titled Vanilla Sky. Though Vanilla Sky's sometimes surreal trappings found the film recieving a mixed reception at the box office, the same could not be said for the following years massively successful sci-fi chase film Minority Report. Based on a short story by science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick and directed by none other than Steven Spielberg, Minority Report scored a direct hit at the box office, and Cruise could next be seen gearing up for his role in Edward Zwick's The Last Samurai. Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.

Anna Kournikova

Anna Kournikova (born 07.06.1981) - Russian tennis player.

Russian-born Anna Kournikova left Moscow at the age of 9 to come to Nick Bollettieri's Tennis Academy in Florida, USA - the same academy which has also produced Monica Seles and Andre Agassi. She was the world's topped-ranked junior at the end of 1995, shortlyafter Martina Hingis joined the professional ranks. Kournikova herselfturned professional in 1996, and competed in her first grand slam at the US Open that year. She performed exceptionally well, defeating seededplayers before finally falling to eventual champion Steffi Graf in the 4th round.
In 1997, she affirmed her position amongst the world's top players, highlighted by a semi-final appearance at her first Wimbledon as aprofessional. In 1998 she further surged up the rankings, with the highlightbeing an appearance in the final of the prestigious Lipton Championships, defeating four top 10 players consecutively along the way. Soon after, shescored her first victory over world number 1 Hingis, and just prior to Wimbledon she broke into the world Top 10 for the first time in her career. A thumb injury before Wimbledon (suffered in a match where she defeated Graf) ruled her out of tournaments for the next few months, and she hassince had a tough time regaining her momentum. 1999 began with acontroversial Australian Open, her play marred by poor form with her service. However, she did manage to make the 4th round in singles (her best result) as well as winning the doubles championships with Hingis as her partner.
Anna says her game wasn't model led after any one player, although lists Graf and Seles as players she has learnt from, watching television. Now at 18 years of age, she is developing her power game and exhibiting some fearful ground strokes coupled with superb court mentality. Anna is indeed superstar material, with glamourous looks (she says if not for tennis, her passion would be acting) and an aggressive all-court game to match. In fact, she has had an agent since the age of 10. She is currently on the verge of the world Top 10, and others for see her and Hingis (along with the Williams sisters) battling it out for world number 1 in the not-too-distant future. Regardless, Anna Kournikova will play a great role in the future of women's tennis.

Lewis Carrol

Lewis Carrol (27.01.1832 - 14.01.1898) - English writer.

Lewis Carrol (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was a remarkable English writer, mathematician, philosopher and a deacon. One of his lifetime passions included photography. His most famous works is the fairy-tale “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. The writer was born on January 27th, 1832, in Daresbury, Cheshire. His father was a parish priest. Charles had seven sisters and three brothers. From the very childhood he showed himself as a clever and quick-witted boy. When he was twelve, he was sent to a private school near Richmond. In 1845 he had to move to another school, which he didn’t like much.
In 1851 Charles moved to Oxford and entered one of the best and aristocratic colleges there - Christ Church. After graduation he read lections on Mathematics at the same college for 26 years. It was his main income. He also became a deacon here and had the right to preach without work in the parish. His literature career began while he was still in college. He wrote short stories and poems, which he sent to various magazines. At that time he took the pseudonym “Lewis Carrol” on the advice of one editor. His works gradually gained popularity. By 1854, all serious English publishing houses were accepting them. While working at college, he met the new dean Henry Lidell and his family. The dean had three daughters: Alice, Edith and Lorina.
Lewis Carrol liked visiting this family and spending time with them. Many biographers believe that his famous fairy-tale “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” was written about Alice Lidell. In 1867 the writer visited Russia. It was a period of theological contact and exchange among Anglican and Orthodox churches. During this trip, Lewis visited Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw, Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and many other European cities. It was his first and only trip abroad. Description of this trip could be found in his personal diary which was published after his death. Apart from literature, Lewis Carrol was busy with various mathematical work and scientific inventions. These works were published under his real name. He died in January, 1898, in Guildford, at his sister’s home.

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin (10.04.1870 - 21.01.1924) - Russian revolutionary and politician.

Born on April 10, 1870 this son of a Russian nobleman was to have a profound effect on the future of Russia and, indeed, the world. His father had been the son of a serf who had risen to post of inspector of schools in Simbirsk. While his mother was the daughter of land owning physician.
In school he proved himself to be very bright though he suffered alienation because of it. However, he excelled in his studies. He also enjoyed reading and writings of Goethe and Turgenev would affect him for the rest of his life.
Two major tragedies occurred which had an acute effect on the young Lenin (then Ulyanov). In 1886 his father died from a cerebral haemorrhage, the following year his brother, Alexander, was hung for plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Lenin renounced religion and the political system. Added to this he was the brother of dead revolutionary and found many doors closed to him. He finally managed to be accepted in a Kazan University where he studied law. This was to be shortlived as he was expelled for attending a peaceful protest some three months later. He was ostracised from the academic world. He studied the law on his own and passed the exam, coming first in a class of 124 in 1891.
He moved to St. Petersburg in 1893 where he practised law. While there he began developing a Marxist underground movement. He grouped members into six member cells. By this means industrial conditions were investigated, statistics compiled and pamphlets written. It was also through these groups that he met his future wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, who he married in 1898.
He travelled to Switzerland to meet like minded Social Democrats in 1895. While there he talked with Georgi Plekhanov. They argued over the means of bringing about change in Russia. Plekhanov wanted to include the liberal middle class; Lenin favoured the rise of the proletariat. This disagreement led to the eventual split of the Social Democratic party into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.
When Lenin returned to Russia he carried with him illegal pamphlets, he wanted to start up a revolutionary paper. On the eve of its publication he and other leaders were arrested. He served fifteen months in prison. After this term he was exiled to Siberia and it was there that he and Krupskaya were married. Having finished their period of exile in 1900 they left for Switzerland where they finally managed to establish their paper, Iskra (Spark). During his years in Switzerland he rose to a position of power in the Social Democratic party. His uncompromising views were a core cause for the split in the party.
The 1905 St. Petersburg Massacre spurred Lenin to advocate violent action. The Massacre itself occurred when Cossacks fired on peaceful protesters led by Father Georgi Gapon. This event led to several uprisings in Russia. Lenin returned to Russia for two years but the promised revolution did not happen as the Tsar made enough concessions to mollify the people. Lenin went abroad again.
1917 was to finally see the revolution in Russia. In fact two revolutions occurred in this year. In March steelworkers in St. Petersburg went on strike. It grew until thousands of people lined the streets. The Tsar’s power collapsed and the Duma, led by Alexander Kerensky, took power. Lenin made a deal with the Germans; if they could get him safely back to Russia, he would take power and pull Russia out of the war. Kerensky was to fall over this same issue. He refused to take Russia out a war in which they were suffering severe losses and causing brutal hardship at home. Lenin came to power in October after a nearly bloodless coup.
At age forty seven Vladimir Ilich Lenin was named president of the Society of People’s Commissars (Communist Party). The problems of the new government were enormous. The war with Germany was ended immediately (his battle cry had been “Bread not War”). Though Russia lost the bread basket of the Ukraine to Germany this was soon regained when Germany was ultimately defeated in the war. Land was redistributed, some as collective farms. Factories, mines, banks and utilities were all taken over by the state. The Russian Orthodox Church was disestablished.
There was opposition and this led to a civil war in 1918 between the Mensheviks (Whites) and the Bolsheviks (Reds). Despite being supported by Britain and the U.S.A. the whites were defeated after a bitter struggle.
From 1919 to 1921 famine and typhus ravaged Russia and left over 27 million people dead. To counter these disasters Lenin put into effect the New Economic Plan. This plan embraced some capital ideas (limited private industry) in order to revitalise the flagging economy. However he was never to see the full effect of his measures.
In May 1922 Lenin suffered the first of a series of strokes, less than a year later he suffered a second one. In his two remaining years he tried correct some of the excesses of the regime. He saw that it would be necessary to learn coexistence with capitalist countries and eliminate the inefficiency of his bureaucracy. He also tried to ensure that Trotsky and not Stalin succeeded him. In this endeavour he failed. Stalin was far too clever and astute even for Lenin. 1923 saw him decline further as he had another stroke which left him paralysed and speechless. He never fully recovered and died of a cerebral haemorrhage on January 21, 1924.

Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Lermontov (15. 10 [O.S. 3.10] 1814 – 27.07 [O.S. 15.07] 1841) - Russian writer and poet.

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was born on 15 October 1814 in Moscow. He spent his childhood in the village of Tarkhany which was located in Penza Oblast. As the saying goes in the 17th century one of the Scottish Earls of Learmont settled in Russia and Mikhail was his descendant. Scientists also made a supposition that famous Scottish poet Thomas Learmonth was his relative. According to established fact Mikhail Lermontov was a descendant of Yuri (George) Learmont who was a Scottish officer. In the 17th century he moved to Russia.
Mikhail’s father, Yuri, was a serviceman. His mother Maria Arsenyeva died when Mikhail was a child. Lermontov’s grandmother, Yelizaveta Alekseyevna, brought him up after Maria’s death. At the age of ten Mikhail had problems with health and they moved to the Caucasus. The fertile climate of this region was good for Mikhail. From that time he loved the Caucasus.
Lermontov spent his childhood in the intellectual atmosphere and he became interested in English literature. He studied Byron’s poetry. When Mikhail was a child he was taught by a Frenchman named Gendrot. But Yelizaveta Alekseyevna decided that additional education was necessary for her grandson and took him to Moscow where the young poet entered the gymnasium. While there Lermontov developed a passion for the poetry of Zhukovsky and Pushkin. After a while he met Katerina Khvostovaya whom he loved. Lermontov inscribed some poems to her. At the same time the young poet developed a talent for sarcastic humor. Moreover he could draw caricatures and pin somebody down with an epigram or nickname.
In 1830 after studying at gymnasium Mikhail entered Moscow University. That year his father died and this event made a lasting impression on him. Lermontov’s sorrow was apparent in his poems "Forgive me, Will we Meet Again?" and "The Terrible Fate of Father and Son". Lermontov was not a student for a long time. In 1832 because of misunderstanding with professor Malov he left the university.
After studying for two years at university Lermontov decided to change his career choice. Between 1830 and 1834 Lermontov attended the cadet school. In those years he started writing poetry. He became interested in Russian history and medieval epics and it was apparent in some his poems including the Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov and Borodino.
In 1837 Pushkin died. His death produced a strong impression on Lermontov. Consequently he wrote a poem “Death of the Poet” which displeased the Tsar. Lermontov was immediately exiled to the Caucasus. But this region was native for him because he spent there his childhood.
In 1838 and 1839 Lermontov was in Saint Petersburg. Mikhail loved Barbara Lopukhina and he described his love in the novel Princess Ligovskaya which he didn’t complete. In 1840 the son of French ambassador challenged Lermontov to a duel. As a result Mikhail returned to the army. He joined hand-to-hand combat at the Battle of the Valerik River. This event was a basis for his poem Valerik. By 1839 Lermontov wrote one of his famous novels, A Hero of Our Time. Mikhail Lermontov became a great poet of Russian literature. He is also called “the poet of the Caucasus”. Lermontov was a founder of the Russian psychological novel.
In July 1841 because of Lermontov’s joke Nikolai Martynov challenged him to a duel. Martynov killed Lermontov with his first shot. Mikhail Lermontov was interred at Tarkhany.

Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Lermontov (15. 10 [O.S. 3.10] 1814 – 27.07 [O.S. 15.07] 1841) - Russian writer and poet.

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was born on 15 October 1814 in Moscow. He spent his childhood in the village of Tarkhany which was located in Penza Oblast. As the saying goes in the 17th century one of the Scottish Earls of Learmont settled in Russia and Mikhail was his descendant. Scientists also made a supposition that famous Scottish poet Thomas Learmonth was his relative. According to established fact Mikhail Lermontov was a descendant of Yuri (George) Learmont who was a Scottish officer. In the 17th century he moved to Russia.
Mikhail’s father, Yuri, was a serviceman. His mother Maria Arsenyeva died when Mikhail was a child. Lermontov’s grandmother, Yelizaveta Alekseyevna, brought him up after Maria’s death. At the age of ten Mikhail had problems with health and they moved to the Caucasus. The fertile climate of this region was good for Mikhail. From that time he loved the Caucasus.
Lermontov spent his childhood in the intellectual atmosphere and he became interested in English literature. He studied Byron’s poetry. When Mikhail was a child he was taught by a Frenchman named Gendrot. But Yelizaveta Alekseyevna decided that additional education was necessary for her grandson and took him to Moscow where the young poet entered the gymnasium. While there Lermontov developed a passion for the poetry of Zhukovsky and Pushkin. After a while he met Katerina Khvostovaya whom he loved. Lermontov inscribed some poems to her. At the same time the young poet developed a talent for sarcastic humor. Moreover he could draw caricatures and pin somebody down with an epigram or nickname.
In 1830 after studying at gymnasium Mikhail entered Moscow University. That year his father died and this event made a lasting impression on him. Lermontov’s sorrow was apparent in his poems "Forgive me, Will we Meet Again?" and "The Terrible Fate of Father and Son". Lermontov was not a student for a long time. In 1832 because of misunderstanding with professor Malov he left the university.
After studying for two years at university Lermontov decided to change his career choice. Between 1830 and 1834 Lermontov attended the cadet school. In those years he started writing poetry. He became interested in Russian history and medieval epics and it was apparent in some his poems including the Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov and Borodino.
In 1837 Pushkin died. His death produced a strong impression on Lermontov. Consequently he wrote a poem “Death of the Poet” which displeased the Tsar. Lermontov was immediately exiled to the Caucasus. But this region was native for him because he spent there his childhood.
In 1838 and 1839 Lermontov was in Saint Petersburg. Mikhail loved Barbara Lopukhina and he described his love in the novel Princess Ligovskaya which he didn’t complete. In 1840 the son of French ambassador challenged Lermontov to a duel. As a result Mikhail returned to the army. He joined hand-to-hand combat at the Battle of the Valerik River. This event was a basis for his poem Valerik. By 1839 Lermontov wrote one of his famous novels, A Hero of Our Time. Mikhail Lermontov became a great poet of Russian literature. He is also called “the poet of the Caucasus”. Lermontov was a founder of the Russian psychological novel.
In July 1841 because of Lermontov’s joke Nikolai Martynov challenged him to a duel. Martynov killed Lermontov with his first shot. Mikhail Lermontov was interred at Tarkhany.

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee (06.02.1945 - 11.05.1981) - Chinese actor and sportsman.

Bruce Lee (nee Lee Jun-fan) was an outstanding martial arts instructor, a film actor, a screenwriter, a philosopher and a founder of Jeet Kun Do. He was a well-known reformer in the field of Chinese martial arts. His acting career began when he was a little child and he starred in 36 films. The fighter was born on November 27th, 1940 in San Francisco. His father was a comedian of Cantonese-Chinese opera. His mother had Eurasian roots. She was half German and half Chinese. For the first time, he appeared on TV when he was only three months old. He played the role of a little girl in “Golden Gate Girl”. His next role was in “The Birth of Mankind”. He was six years old then. Martial arts interested him since childhood, but he wasn’t seriously engaged in it till he was 18.
When he was 14, he took dance lessons. Several years later he won the dance championship. In 1958 he started participating at school competitions in boxing. Then he decided to take up kung fu. His first kung fu teacher was amazed how quickly he mastered the basics. He could learn certain movements in just three days, while others spent weeks on this. In 1956, in Hong Kong he studied Wing Chun style of kung fu. Since then, it was his main style. Bruce Lee made a significant contribution to popularize this style and he took part in several films about it, including “Fist of Fury”. The main idea of this style was to fight without weapon. Later, he mastered judo, jiu-jitsu and boxing. He gradually developed his own style of martial arts known as Jeet Kun Do.
When he was 19, he went to Seattle to work at his father’s friend’s restaurant. He did that to prove his American citizenship. While he was working as a waiter, he attended art classes and Edison Technical School. After that he entered the University of Washington, where he studied philosophy. When he was 24, he met his wife Linda Lee Cadwell. A couple had two children. At that time, Bruce began acting in television series, performing martial arts. He quickly became popular and many prominent people wanted to be among his students. He opened his own school of martial arts, which brought him financial independence. However, he was sad not to get the main roles in the movies. That’s why he decided to leave the USA and return to Hong Kong.
In 1971 he opened his own studio “Golden Harvest”, which eventually became very famous. He persuaded Raymond Chow to give him the main role in “Big Boss” and to allow him to stage the fight scenes. The risk paid off - the film was an unprecedented success. Bruce Lee basically changed the idea of martial arts in the movie. After that he was asked to make two more movies with a solid budget: “Fist of Fury” and “Return of The Dragon”. These films were even more successful and made him a superstar. The actor suddenly died in July, 1973. While working on the film “Game of Death” he suffered a strong headache. After taking a painkiller with aspirin and meprobomate he went to sleep and never woke up.

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (12.02.1809 - 15.04.1865) - 16th President of the United States.

Born on Feb. 12, 1809, in a log cabin in backwoods Hardin co., Ky. (now Larue co.), he grew up on newly broken pioneer farms of the frontier. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a migratory carpenter and farmer, nearly always poverty-stricken. Little is known of his mother, Nancy Hanks, who died in 1818, not long after the family had settled in the wilds of what is now Spencer co., Ind. Thomas Lincoln soon afterward married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow; she was a kind and affectionate stepmother to the boy. Abraham had almost no formal schooling—the scattered weeks of school attendance in Kentucky and Indiana amounted to less than a year; but he taught himself, reading and rereading a small stock of books. His first glimpse of the wider world came in a voyage downriver to New Orleans on a flatboat in 1828, but little is known of that journey. In 1830 the Lincolns moved once more, this time to Macon co., Ill.
After another visit to New Orleans, the young Lincoln settled in 1831 in the village of New Salem, Ill., not far from Springfield. There he began by working in a store and managing a mill. By this time a tall (6 ft 4 in./190 cm), rawboned young man, he won much popularity among the inhabitants of the frontier town by his great strength and his flair for storytelling, but most of all by his strength of character. His sincerity and capability won respect that was strengthened by his ability to hold his own in the roughest society. He was chosen captain of a volunteer company gathered for the Black Hawk War (1832), but the company did not see battle.
Returning to New Salem, Lincoln was a partner in a grocery store that failed, leaving him with a heavy burden of debt. He became a surveyor for a time, was village postmaster, and did various odd jobs, including rail splitting. All the while he sought to improve his education and studied law. The story of a brief love affair with Ann Rutledge, which supposedly occurred at this time, is now discredited.
In 1834, Lincoln was elected to the state legislature, in which he served four successive terms (until 1841) and achieved prominence as a Whig. In 1836 he obtained his license as an attorney, and the next year he moved to Springfield, where he became a law partner of John T. Stuart. Lincoln's practice steadily increased. That first partnership was succeeded by others, with Stephen T. Logan and then with William H. Herndon, who was later to be Lincoln's biographer. Lincoln displayed great ability in law, a ready grasp of argument, and sincerity, color, and lucidity of speech.
In 1842 he married Mary Todd (see Lincoln, Mary Todd) after a troubled courtship. He continued his interest in politics and entered on the national scene by serving one term in Congress (1847–49). He remained obscure, however, and his attacks as a Whig on the motives behind the Mexican War (though he voted for war supplies) seemed unpatriotic to his constituents, so he lost popularity at home. Lincoln worked hard for the election of the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor, in 1848, but when he was not rewarded with the office he desired—Commissioner of the General Land Office—he decided to retire from politics and return to the practice of law.
The prairie lawyer emerged again into politics in 1854, when he was caught up in the rising quarrel over slavery. He stoutly opposed the policy of Stephen A. Douglas and particularly the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In a speech at Springfield, repeated at Peoria, he attacked the compromises concerning the question of slavery in the territories and invoked the democratic ideals contained in the Declaration of Independence. In 1855 he sought to become a Senator but failed.
He had already realized that his sentiments were leading him away from the Whigs and toward the new Republican party, and in 1856 he became a Republican. He quickly came to the fore in the party as a moderate opponent of slavery who could win both the abolitionists and the conservative free-staters, and at the Republican national convention of 1856 he was prominent as a possible vice presidential candidate. Two years later he was nominated by the Republican party to oppose Douglas in the Illinois senatorial race.
Accepting the nomination (in a speech delivered at Springfield on June 16), Lincoln gave a ringing declaration in support of the Union: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The campaign that followed was impressive. Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates (seven were held), in which he delivered masterful addresses for the Union and for the democratic idea. He was not an abolitionist, but he regarded slavery as an injustice and an evil, and uncompromisingly opposed its extension.
Though Douglas won the senatorial election, Lincoln had made his mark by the debates; he was now a potential presidential candidate. His first appearance in the East was in Feb., 1860, when he spoke at Cooper Union in New York City. He gained a large following in the antislavery states, but his nomination for President by the Republican convention in Chicago (May, 1860) was as much due to the opposition to William H. Seward, the leading contender, as to Lincoln's own appeal. He was nominated on the third ballot. In the election the Democratic party split; Lincoln was opposed by Douglas (Northern Democrat), John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), and John Bell (Constitutional Unionist). Lincoln was elected with a minority of the popular vote.
To the South, Lincoln's election was the signal for secession. All compromise plans, such as that proposed by John J. Crittenden, failed, and by the time of Lincoln's inauguration seven states had seceded. The new President, determined to preserve the Union at all costs, condemned secession but promised that he would not initiate the use of force. After a slight delay, however, he did order the provisioning of Fort Sumter, and the South chose to regard this as an act of war. On Apr. 12, 1861, Fort Sumter was fired upon, and the Civil War began.
Although various criticisms have been leveled against him, it is generally agreed that Lincoln attacked the vast problems of the war with vigor and surpassing skill. He immediately issued a summons to the militia (an act that precipitated the secession of four more Southern states), ordered a blockade of Confederate ports, and suspended habeas corpus. The last action provoked much criticism, but Lincoln adhered to it, ignoring a circuit court ruling against him in the Merryman Case (see Merryman, ex parte). In the course of the war, Lincoln further extended his executive powers, but in general he exercised those powers with restraint. He was beset not only by the difficulties of the war, but by opposition from men on his own side. His cabinet was rent by internal jealousies and hatred; radical abolitionists condemned him as too mild; conservatives were gloomy over the prospects of success in the war.
In the midst of all this strife, Lincoln continued his course, sometimes almost alone, with wisdom and patience. The progress of battle went against the North at first. Lincoln himself made some bad military decisions (e.g., in ordering the direct advance into Virginia that resulted in the Union defeat at the first battle of Bull Run), and he ran through a succession of commanders in chief before he found Ulysses S. Grant. In the early stages of the war Lincoln revoked orders by John C. Fremont and David Hunter freeing the slaves in their military departments. However, the Union victory at Antietam gave him a position of strength from which to issue his own Emancipation Proclamation.
The restoration and preservation of the Union were still the main tenets of Lincoln's war aims. The sorrows of war and its rigorous necessity afflicted him; he expressed both in one of the noblest public speeches ever made, the Gettysburg Address, made at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery at Gettysburg in 1863. For a time Lincoln was threatened by the desertion of the Republican leaders as well as by a strong opposition party in the presidential election that loomed ahead in the dark days of 1864; but a turn for the better took place before the election, a turn brought about to some extent by a change of military fortune after Grant became commander and particularly after William T. Sherman took Atlanta.
Lincoln was reelected over George B. McClellan by a great majority. His second inaugural address, delivered when the war was drawing to its close, was a plea for the new country that would arise from the ashes of the South. His own view was one of forgiveness, as shown in his memorable phrase “With malice toward none; with charity for all.” He lived to see the end of the war, but he was to have no chance to implement his plans for Reconstruction. On the night of Apr. 14, 1865, when attending a performance at Ford's Theater, he was shot by the actor John Wilkes Booth. The next morning Lincoln died. His death was an occasion for grief even among those who had been his opponents, and many considered him a martyr.

Mikhail Lomonosov

Mikhail Lomonosov (19.11 (08.11. O.S.) 1835 - 15.04.(04.04. O.S.) 1765) - Russian poet and scientist.

Lomonosov was the son of a poor fisherman. At the age of 10 he too took up that line of work. When the few books he was able to obtain could no longer satisfy his growing thirst for knowledge, in December 1730, he left his native village, penniless and on foot, for Moscow. His ambition was to educate himself to join the learned men on whom the tsar Peter I the Great was calling to transform Russia into a modern nation.
The clergy and the nobility, attached to their privileges and fearing the spread of education and science, actively opposed the reforms of which Lomonosov was a lifelong champion. His bitter struggle began as soon as he arrived in Moscow. In order to be admitted to the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy he had to conceal his humble origin; the sons of nobles jeered at him, and he had scarcely enough money for food and clothes. But his robust health and exceptional intelligence enabled him in five years to assimilate the eight-year course of study; during this time he taught himself Greek and read the philosophical works of antiquity.
Noticed at last by his instructors, in January 1736 Lomonosov became a student at the St. Petersburg Academy. Seven months later he left for Germany to study at the University of Marburg, where he led the turbulent life of the German student. His work did not suffer, however, for within three years he had surveyed the main achievements of Western philosophy and science. His mind, freed from all preconception, rebelled at the narrowness of the empiricism in which the disciples of Isaac Newton had bound the natural sciences; in dissertations sent to St. Petersburg, he attacked the problem of the structure of matter.
In 1739, in Freiberg, Lomonosov studied firsthand the technologies of mining, metallurgy, and glassmaking. Also friendly with the poets of the time, he freely indulged the love of verse that had arisen during his childhood with the reading of Psalms. The "Ode," dedicated to the Empress, and the Pismo o pravilakh rossiyskogo stikhotvorstva ("Letter Concerning the Rules of Russian Versification") made a considerable impression at court.
After breaking with one of his masters, the chemist Johann Henckel, and many other mishaps, among which his marriage at Marburg must be included, Lomonosov returned in July 1741 to St. Petersburg. The Academy, which was directed by foreigners and incompetent nobles, gave the young scholar no precise assignment, and the injustice aroused him. His violent temper and great strength sometimes led him to go beyond the rules of propriety, and in May 1743 he was placed under arrest. Two odes sent to the empress Elizabeth won him his liberation in January 1744, as well as a certain poetic prestige at the Academy.
While in prison he worked out the plan of work that he had already developed in Marburg. The 276 zametok po fizike i korpuskulyarnoy filosofi ("276 Notes on Corpuscular Philosophy and Physics") set forth the dominant ideas of his scientific work. Appointed a professor by the Academy in 1745, he translated Christian Wolff's Institutiones philosophiae experimentalis ("Studies in Experimental Philosophy") into Russian and wrote, in Latin, important works on the Meditationes de Caloris et Frigoris Causa (1747; "Cause of Heat and Cold"), the Tentamen Theoriae de vi Aлris Elastica (1748; "Elastic Force of Air"), and the Theoria Electricitatis (1756; "Theory of Electricity"). His friend, the celebrated German mathematician Leonhard Euler, recognized the creative originality of his articles, which were, on Euler's advice, published by the Russian Academy in the Novye kommentari.
In 1748 the laboratory that Lomonosov had been requesting since 1745 was granted him; it then began a prodigious amount of activity. He passionately undertook many tasks and, courageously facing ill will and hostility, recorded in three years more than 4,000 experiments in his Zhurnal laboratori, the results of which enabled him to set up a coloured glass works and to make mosaics with these glasses. Slovo o polze khimi (1751; "Discourse on the Usefulness of Chemistry"), the Pismo k I.I. Shuvalovu o polze stekla (1752; "Letter to I.I. Shuvalov Concerning the Usefulness of Glass"), and the "Ode" to Elizabeth celebrated his fruitful union of abstract and applied science. Anxious to train students, he wrote in 1752 an introduction to the physical chemistry course that he was to set up in his laboratory. The theories on the unity of natural phenomena and the structure of matter that he set forth in the discussion on the Slovo o proiskhozhdeni sveta (1756; "Origin of Light and Colours") and in his theoretical works on electricity in 1753 and 1756 also matured in this laboratory.
Encouraged by the success of his experiments in 1760, Lomonosov inserted in the Meditationes de Solido et Fluido ("Reflections on the Solidity and Fluidity of Bodies") the "universal law of nature"--that is, the law of conservation of matter and energy, which, with the corpuscular theory, constitutes the dominant thread in all his research.
To these achievements were added the composition of Rossiyskaya grammatika and of Kratkoy rossiyskoy letopisets ("Short Russian Chronicle"), ordered by the Empress, and all the work of reorganizing education, to which Lomonosov accorded much importance.
From 1755 he followed very closely the development of Moscow State University (now Moscow M.V. Lomonosov State University), for which he had drawn up the plans. Appointed a councillor by the Academy in 1757, he undertook reforms to make the university an intellectual centre closely linked with the life of the country. To that end, he wrote several scholarly works including Rassuzhdeniye o bolshoy tochnosti morskogo puti (1759; "Discussion of the Great Accuracy of the Maritime Route"); Rassuzhdeniye o proiskhozhdenii ledyanykh gor v severnykh moryakh (1760; "Discussion of the Formation of Icebergs in the Northern Seas"); Kratkoye opisaniye raznykh puteshestviy po severnym moryam . . . (1762-63; "A Short Account of the Various Voyages in the Northern Seas"); and O sloyakh zemnykh (1763; "Of the Terrestrial Strata"), which constituted an important contribution both to science and to the development of commerce and the exploitation of mineral wealth.
Despite the honours that came to him, he continued to lead a simple and industrious life, surrounded by his family and a few friends. He left his house and the laboratory erected in his garden only to go to the Academy. His prestige was considerable in Russia, and his scientific works and his role in the Academy were known abroad. He was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and of that of Bologna. His theories concerning heat and the constitution of matter were opposed by the empiricist scientists of Germany, although they were analyzed with interest in European scientific journals.
The persecutions he suffered, particularly after the empress Elizabeth's death in 1762 (1761, Old Style) exhausted him physically, and he died in 1765. The empress Catherine II the Great had the patriotic scholar buried with great ceremony, but she confiscated all the notes in which were outlined the great humanitarian ideas he had developed.

Jack London

Jack London (12.01.1876 - 22.11.1916) - American writer.

John Griffith "Jack" London was born on 12 January 1876 in San Francisco. His mother, Flora Wellman, lived in Ohio but then moved to San Francisco where she worked as a music teacher. It also known that she was interested in spiritualism. Some biographers suppose that Jack London’s father was William Chaney who lived with Flora Wellman in San Francisco. It is not known if Flora and William were legally married. The house where Jack London spent his childhood was destroyed after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
In 1885 London read Ouida's long Victorian novel Signa. Jack London maintained that this book was the beginning of his literary career. In 1886 he became acquainted with Ina Coolbrith who was a librarian in the Oakland Public Library. She encouraged London’s learning.
In 1889 he started working at Hickmott’s Cannery. His working day lasted 12 to 18 hours. Afterwards Jack London bought the sloop Razzle-Dazzle and became an oyster pirate. After a while he came to Oakland and entered Oakland High School where he started writing articles for the school’s magazine, The Aegis. The first work of London was “Typhoon off the Coast of Japan” in which he described his sailing experiences.
In 1896 Jack London entered the University of California, Berkeley but because of financial difficulties he left the university in a year. Jack London spent a lot of time at Heinold’s saloon where he met Alexander McLean. He was a cruel captain whom the character Wolf Larsen in London’s novel is based.
At the age of 21 Jack London joined the Klondike Gold Rush. This period of life was a basis for some of his popular stories but his health declined there. As a result London had the scurvy. All the events in the Klondike were an incitement for him to write a short story “To Build a Fire” which is considered one of his best.
From 1898 Jack London started working intentionally to publish his writings. The first published work was “To the Man on Trail”. When London began his literary career the new printing technologies appeared. Consequently popular magazines became available for many people and in 1900 he could earn $2,500. In 1903 The Saturday Evening Post bought London’s work The call of the Wild for $750. In addition to that he sold the book rights to Macmillan for $2,000 and as a result London achieved a swift success. When London lived in Oakland he became acquainted with poet George Sterling who became his best friend. Sterling was described in London’s autobiographical novel Martin Eden as Russ Brissenden.
Jack London’s first marriage was in 1900. He married Elizabeth “Bessie” Maddern with whom he had two children: Joan and Bessie (later called Becky). But they divorced and London married Charmian Kittredge in 1905. They didn’t have children because the first child died at birth and the second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
Jack London died November 22, 1916. There are a lot of different suppositions about London’s death. Some people consider that he could commit a suicide but his death certificate gives the cause as uremia. His ashes were interred in Jack London State Historic Park, in Glen Ellen, California.

Jennifer Lopez

Jennifer Lopez (born 24.07.1969) - American singer and actress.

Jennifer Lopez' s first serious screen role in Gregory Nava's 1995 Latino melodrama My Family followed years of training in television movies and series. Like Rosie Perez, Lopez began her career as a Fly Girl a dancer on the sketch comedy series, In Living Color and appeared in music videos by Puff Daddy and Janet Jackson. Her big break came in 1997 when she appeared in the title role of Nava's Selena, the story of the successful Tejano singer who was tragically murdered in 1995.
Lopez was at first cast as a femme fatale due in no small part to her classic Latina beauty (she was born in the Bronx to parents of Puerto Rican descent) and worked almost exclusively with acclaimed directors: Francis Ford Coppola (Jack, 1996), Oliver Stone (U-Turn, 1997), and Bob Rafelson (Blood and Wine, 1996). In 1998, she had one of her most acclaimed roles, starring opposite George Clooney in Out of Sight, Steven Soderbergh's adaptation the Elmore Leonard novel. Cast as a deputy federal marshal who falls for a charming criminal (Clooney), Lopez won raves for her tough, sexy performance, and in the process, she became the highest paid Latina actress in Hollywood history. That same year, she earned an introduction to a new generation of fans by lending her voice to the popular Antz (1998). The lavish but much more adult-oriented thriller The Cell (2000) followed shortly thereafter, bringing Lopez one of her first number-one openings.
In an attempt to curry favor from the rom-com crowd, Lopez lightened things up a bit opposite Matthew McConaughey in 2001's romantic comedy The Wedding Planner. Though Lopez was consistently smooth in her frequent transitions from actress to songstress, her next role in the supernatural romance Angel Eyes (2001) failed to click with audiences and critics alike, and her role in the cathartic revenge thriller Enough (2002) likewise disappeared from theaters shortly after its release. Though Maid in Manhattan (2002) was ultimately relegated to a similar fate as her last few films, few could anticipate the outright hostility with which her 2003 comedy Gigli would be greeted. In the movie, Lopez was cast as a female gangster assigned to keep an eye on a kidnapper (played by then-real-life-boyfriend Ben Affleck) who is holding a psychologically challenged young boy hostage. The harsh public backlash against the film was likely due (at least in part) to over-saturated media coverage of the duo's tumultuous off-screen relationship. Though the film's failure wasn't exactly what one would call a career-ender for either star, their shoddy onscreen dynamic reportedly led director Kevin Smith to excise most of Lopez' role in the Affleck-starrer Jersey Girl.
Finally, in 2005, it appeared the actress' string of bad box-office luck had possibly reached its end. Teaming up with Jane Fonda for the latter thespian's first feature in over a decade, Lopez scored a modest hit with the comedy Monster In-Law. The Lasse Hallstrom-helmed drama An Unfinished Life followed later the same year with Lopez opposite heavy-hitters Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman.
In addition to her screen work, Lopez has also enjoyed a successful singing career on the dance/Latin pop circuit. Denise Sullivan, All Movie Guide.

Madonna

Madonna (born 16.08.1958) - American singer.

Madonna Louise Ciccone Ritchie, known as Madonna, is an American dance-pop singer-songwriter, record and film producer, dancer, actress, author and fashion icon. She is noted for her ambitious music videos and stage performances as well as using political, sexual, and religious themes in her work.
In 2000, Guinness World Records listed Madonna as one of the most successful female recording artist of all time, with estimated worldwide sales of 120 million albums; in 2005, her record company credited her as having sold over 200 million albums worldwide. Madonna is one of the highest earning female singer of all time according to both the 2007 Guinness Book of Records, and Billboard Magazine. Forbes magazine has estimated her net worth at $325 million. In addition, Madonna holds the record for one of the top-grossing concert tours by a female artist
Madonna Louise Ciccone was born in Bay City, Michigan. She was the third of six children (Martin, Anthony, Christopher, Paula, Melanie, Mario & Jennifer) born to Silvio "Tony" Ciccone, an Italian-American Chrysler engineer whose parents originated from Pacentro, and Madonna Louise Fortin, who was of Quebecois descent.
She was raised in a Catholic family in the Detroit suburbs of Pontiac and Avon Township (now Rochester Hills). Madonna's mother died of breast cancer at age 30 on December 1, 1963. Her father later married the family housekeeper, Joan Gustafson, and they had two children together.
Madonna convinced her father to allow her to take ballet classes. Her ballet teacher, Christopher Flynn, exposed Madonna to gay discotheques. She attended Rochester Adams High School, where she was a straight-A student and a member of the cheerleading squad. Madonna received a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan.
She left at the end of her sophomore year in 1978 and moved to New York City to pursue a dance career. Madonna has said:
“ "When I came to New York it was the first time I'd ever taken a plane, the first time I'd ever gotten a taxi-cab, the first time for everything. And I came here with $35 in my pocket. It was the bravest thing I'd ever done." ”
She had little money and for some time lived in squalor, working low-paying jobs including a stint at Dunkin' Donuts. She also worked as a nude model. She studied with Martha Graham and Pearl Lang, and later performed with several modern dance companies, including Alvin Ailey and the Walter Nicks dancers.
While performing as a dancer for the French disco artist Patrick Hernandez on his 1979 world tour, Madonna became involved with the musician Dan Gilroy, with whom she later formed her first rock band, the Breakfast Club. In it, she sang and played drums and guitar before forming the band Emmy in 1980 with drummer and former boyfriend Stephen Bray. She and Bray wrote and produced dance songs that brought her local attention in New York dance clubs. DJ and record producer Mark Kamins was impressed by her demo recordings, so he brought them to the attention of Sire Records founder Seymour Stein.
In 1982, Madonna signed a singles deal with Sire Records (a new wave label belonging to Warner Bros. Records) in the United States that paid her $5,000 per song. Her first release (April 24, 1982), "Everybody", a self-written song produced by Mark Kamins, became a hit on the Billboard Hot Dance/Club Chart but failed to make an impact on the Billboard Hot 100. It also gained airplay on U.S. R&B radio stations, leading many to assume that Madonna was a black artist. The double-sided 12" vinyl single featuring "Burning Up" and "Physical Attraction" followed in 1983, and was a success on the U.S. dance charts. These results convinced Sire Records' executives to finance an album.
Her debut album, Madonna, a collection of dance songs, was primarily produced by Reggie Lucas, but in the process both realized they could not work well together. After initial production on the album was completed, Madonna took the record to her then boyfriend, John "Jellybean" Benitez, who remixed and rearranged it. It reached number eight on the U.S. albums chart and contained three successful Hot 100 singles, "Holiday", "Borderline", and "Lucky Star". At the time of its release, Madonna sold three million copies worldwide, one million of those in the U.S. It has since been certified with current sales of thirteen million worldwide.
As Madonna rose to fame, teenage girls became increasingly influenced by her fashions portrayed in photographs, live performances and music videos. Defined by lace tops, skirts over Capri pants, fishnet stockings, jewelry bearing the Christian cross, and bleached hair, this distinctive style became a popular female fashion trend in the 1980s.
Her follow up album, Like a Virgin, was an international success, and became her first number one album on the U.S. albums chart. Buoyed by the success of its title track, which reached number one in the U.S. (with a six week stay at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart) as well as hit singles with "Material Girl" (#2 US, kept out of the number one spot by USA for Africa's "We Are the World" single), "Angel", and "Dress You Up", the album sold twelve million copies at its time of release and currently stands at seventeen million copies worldwide and produced four top-five singles in the U.S. and the UK Her performance of the song at the first MTV Video Music Awards, during which she writhed on the stage (on top of a wedding cake) wearing a combination bustier/wedding gown, lacy stockings, garters, and her then-trademark "Boy Toy" belt, was the first of several public displays that boosted Madonna's fan base as much as they incensed some critics, who felt that her provocative style attempted to disguise an absence of talent.
In 1985, Madonna entered mainstream films, beginning with a brief appearance as a club singer in the film Vision Quest. The soundtrack to the film contained her second number one pop hit, the Grammy-nominated ballad "Crazy for You", as well as the UK hit "Gambler". Later that year she appeared in the commercially and critically successful film Desperately Seeking Susan, with her comedic performance winning her positive reviews. The film introduced the dance song "Into the Groove", which was released as a B-side to her single "Angel", peaking at number five in the US and becoming a major hit internationally, and her first number one in the UK.
Madonna embarked on her first concert tour in the U.S. in 1985 titled The Virgin Tour, with opening act The Beastie Boys.
In July 1985, Penthouse and Playboy magazines published a number of black and white nude photos of Madonna taken in the late 1970s. The publications caused a swell of public discussion of Madonna, who at first tried to block them from being published, but later remained unapologetic and defiant. Speaking to a global audience at the outdoor Live Aid charity concert at the height of the controversy, Madonna made a critical reference to the media and stated she would not take her jacket off, despite the heat, because "they might hold it against me ten years from now". Madonna later appeared on the cover of the NY Post newspaper quoted saying about the photographs "I'm NOT ashamed."
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Madonna dated Dan Gilroy, with whom she formed the band Breakfast Club. In the early 1980s, she also dated musician Stephen Bray, who later co-produced songs such as "Into the Groove" and "Express Yourself", artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, DJ and record producer Mark Kamins, and musician Jellybean Benitez, who produced tracks and remixed her debut album Madonna.
While filming the music video for "Material Girl" in 1985, Madonna began dating actor Sean Penn. The two were married later that year on Madonna's twenty-seventh birthday. Their relationship was marred by Penn's frequent outbursts against the press, leading the couple to be dubbed the “Poison Penns.” After filing and withdrawing divorce papers in December 1987, Madonna and Penn separated on New Year's Eve of 1988 after allegations of abuse on Penn's part, and were officially divorced in September 1989. Of her marriage to Penn, Madonna later told Tatler, "I was completely obsessed with my career and not ready to be generous in any shape or form."
After the divorce from Penn was made official in 1989, Madonna began a highly-publicized relationship with Warren Beatty while working on the film Dick Tracy early in 1989. Despite rumors that the two had become engaged in May 1990, the couple's relationship seemed to have ended by the summer. In a 1991 interview with Vanity Fair, Madonna said, "I'd go, 'Warren, did you really chase that girl for a year?!?' And he’d say, 'Nah, it's all lies.' I should have known better. I was unrealistic, but then, you always think you're going to be the one."
In late 1990, Madonna dated Tony Ward, a young bisexual model and porn star who starred in her music videos for "Cherish" (1989) and "Justify My Love" (1990). Their relationship ended by early 1991,and Madonna later began an eight-month relationship with rapper Vanilla Ice, who appeared later in her Sex book.
In 1992; Madonna dated actor John Enos, her bodyguard James Albright, and in 1994 went out with basketball player Dennis Rodman for four months.
In September 1994, while walking in Central Park, Madonna met fitness trainer Carlos Leon who became her personal trainer and lover. On October 14, 1996, Madonna gave birth to the couple's child, Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon. The couple ended their relationship in 1997. Madonna then began dating Andy Bird, who sold his story to the newspapers in a tell-all about their eighteen-month relationship in late 2000/early 2001.
On August 11, 2000, Madonna gave birth to a son, Rocco John Ritchie, with Guy Ritchie, whom she had met in 1999 through mutual friends Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler. On December 22, 2000, Madonna and Ritchie were married in Scotland. As of 2007, Madonna resides in London and her country estate in Wiltshire, with Ritchie and their children.
In March, 2007 Crown Publishing canceled a tell-all book deal, thought to be worth 5 million dollars, with Madonna and Ritchie's former nanny Melissa Dumas. The book claims that Madonna and Ritchie have a cold and distant relationship and that they are both fixated on money and restrictive dietary habits.
Over the span of her lengthy career, Madonna also has been rumored to be romantically linked to numerous men and women including John F. Kennedy, Jr., Sandra Bernhard, Prince and Esai Morales in 1988; Lenny Kravitz in 1990; Michael Jackson in 1991; Jose Canseco, Ingrid Casares and Big Daddy Kane in 1992; Mark Wahlberg and Anthony Kiedis in 1993; Charles Barkley and Tupac Shakur in 1994; Chris Paciello in 1997; Billy Zane in 1998; David Blaine and Jenny Shimizu in 1999 before her marriage with Ritchie. But most of these affairs are unconfirmed so far.
On October 10, 2006, Madonna filed adoption papers for a Malawian baby boy named David Banda, whom her family renamed David Banda Mwale Ciccone Ritchie, born September 24, 2005, during her trip to an orphanage in Malawi.
After a passport and visa were issued for the child, Banda was flown out of Malawi on October 16. The adoption raised public controversy about whether special treatment was given to Madonna considering the fact that Malawian law normally requires one year of residence for potential adoptive parents. However, adoption rights groups pointed out that only three visas were issued in 2005 for adopted children to leave Malawi.
Madonna appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on October 25, 2006, to refute the allegations. During the half-hour interview, the singer claimed that there are no written adoption laws in Malawi that regulate foreign adoption and that she had been planning to adopt for two years. She also claimed that Banda had been in critical condition and was suffering from pneumonia after surviving malaria and tuberculosis when she had found him in the orphanage. In addition, Madonna blamed the media for "doing a great disservice to all the orphans of Africa, period, not just the orphans of Malawi", by discouraging people from adopting children from African nations. She stated, "I wanted to go into a Third World country—I wasn't sure where—and give a life to a child who might not otherwise have had one."
On October 22, 2006, it was reported that Yohane Banda, David Banda's birth father, did not understand what "adoption" meant and that he had not realized that he was giving up his son "for good." He had assumed that this arrangement was more like a fostering agreement. A few days later, after the Winfrey interview, he said, "These so-called human rights activists are harassing me every day, threatening me that I am not aware of what I am doing." He was also reported to say, "They want me to support their court case, a thing I cannot do for I know what I agreed with Madonna and her husband." On November 1, 2006, Madonna responded to Banda's comments on an Dateline NBC interview with Meredith Vieira by saying that Yohane Banda had known what he was doing, having refused to accept her offer to financially support him and the child without adopting the child.
Because of Malawi laws, Madonna and Guy Ritchie remain David Banda's foster parents for the required eighteen-month period.
Since the late-1990s, Madonna has become a devotee of the Kabbalah Centre and a disciple of its controversial head Rabbi Philip Berg and his wife Karen. Madonna and husband Guy Ritchie attend Kabbalah classes and have been reported to have adopted a number of aspects of the movement associated with Judaism. The media has reported that Madonna has taken on the Biblical name of Esther and has donated millions of dollars to Kabbalah Centres in London, New York, and Los Angeles. She no longer performs on Friday nights because this is the time when the Jewish Sabbath begins. Madonna wears a red string and has visited Israel with members of the Kabbalah Centre to celebrate some of the Jewish holidays. She also studies personally with her own private-tutor, Rabbi Eitan Yardeni, whose wife Sarah Yardeni runs Madonna's favorite charitable project, "Spirituality for Kids", a subsidiary of the Kabbalah Centre. Madonna reportedly donated $21 million towards a new Kabbalah school for children.
Controversy erupted again well before the release of her most recent album Confessions on a Dance Floor. Many Israeli rabbis condemned Madonna and the forthcoming song "Isaac" (tenth on its track listing) because they believed the song to be a tribute to Rabbi Isaac Luria, also known as Yitzhak Luria (1534–1572), one of the greatest Kabbalists of all time, and claimed that Jewish law forbids using a holy rabbi's name for profit. In interviews, Madonna had called this song: "The Binding of Isaac" and rumors spread that it was based on the major episode in the life of the Hebrew patriarch Isaac. Despite continued accusations that the song is about Isaac Luria, Madonna has repeatedly denied such accusations, claiming she could not think of a title for the song and, therefore, named it after Yitzhak (Isaac) Sinwani. In the song, Madonna sings with Sinwani, an Israeli singer, who is chanting a Yemenite Jewish song. Said Madonna: "The album isn't even out, so how could Jewish scholars in Israel know what my song is about? I don't know enough about Isaac Luria to write a song, though I've learned a bit in my studies."
Madonna has openly defended her Kabbalah studies by stating, for example:
“I wouldn't say studying Kabbalah for eight years goes under the category or falls under the category of being a fad or a trend. Now there might be people who are interested in it because they think it's trendy, but I can assure you that studying Kabbalah is actually a very challenging thing to do. It requires a lot of work, a lot of reading, a lot of time, a lot of commitment and a lot of discipline.”
Furthermore, Madonna said in a BBC interview that she believes Christianity is intolerant of questioning, whereas Kabbalah is not. Madonna has also defended Kabbalah against detractors who claim it is a cult designed to extort money from followers.
Despite her career achievements, Madonna has been the target of criticism since the beginning of her career. Reviews about her body of work have generally been mixed and many music critics have put her artistry in doubt, while some have proclaimed her the "Queen of Pop".
A common criticism against Madonna regards her singing voice and vocal range, which some consider to be weak, limited and mannered. She has also been criticized for egocentrism, publicity stunts and a tendency to generate controversy. Joni Mitchell once declared, "She has knocked the importance of talent out of the arena. She's manufactured. She's made a lot of money and become the biggest star in the world by hiring the right people". Other popular entertainers like Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey[citation needed] have expressed disapproval of her artistic abilities, disdain, or criticism against her image and work.
Moments of her career in which Madonna has been heavily criticized include her 1989 music video for "Like a Prayer", the publication of the book Sex and album Erotica in 1992, her 2006 performance of "Live to Tell" during the Confessions Tour, and her adoption of Malawian infant David Banda in 2006.
Much of her career has seen rebellion against the Roman Catholic Church, which has generated criticism in the past. In 1990, when Madonna toured Italy with the Blond Ambition Tour, the Pope encouraged citizens not to attend the concert. The Pope accused Madonna of blasphemy against the Catholic Church (a crime in Italy), and attempted to have her banned from stepping foot on Italian soil[citation needed]. A private association of devout Roman Catholics, called Famiglia Domani, also boycotted the show for many of the same displays of sexual innuendos and eroticism the Pope had denounced.
In response, in a 1990 press conference in Italy, Madonna declared, "I am Italian American and proud of it." In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Madonna said that the Pope's reaction hurt, "because I'm Italian, you know", but in another interview the same year stated that she had ceased to practice Catholicism because the Church "completely frowns on sex... except for procreation". In the summer of 2006, Madonna drew criticism from Vatican officials when she took her Confessions Tour to Rome. Vatican officials claimed that Madonna's performance while hanging off a cross and wearing a crown of thorns was an open attack on Catholicism and should not be performed in the same city as the pope's residence.
In the documentary Italians in America - Our Contribution, author Gay Talese relates Madonna's rebellion against the Catholic Church to her Italian ancestry. Talese claims that Madonna's paternal ancestors come from a region of Southern Italy with a long tradition of rebellion against the Catholic Church. Despite her alleged rebellion, Madonna had both of her biological children baptized in a Roman Catholic Church.
Madonna has received criticism from animal rights groups for wearing fur coats and in the past, was criticized for renting out her house for hunting parties.
Madonna's lyrics have also been panned as simple or even dull by some.
Many critics, however, see Madonna as a talented vocalist and songwriter. She received good reviews for "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" cover on which her performance was described as a "heartfelt vocal". Her vocals on "Live to Tell" were considered her best at the time by some, and the song's lyrics have been described as poignant.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela (18.07.1918 - 05.12.2013) - President of South Africa

Nelson Mandela was one of the most famous activists in the struggle for human rights and the 8th President of South Africa. For his beliefs he spent over 25 years in prison. The future leader was born in a small village in the suburbs of Umtata on July 18, 1918. His father for a while was the ruler of the village, however the problems with colonists made him relocate. At the same time he managed to reserve a place at the Council.
His mother’s name was Nkedama and she was the third wife in the family. Nelson’s real name was Holila. However on the first day of school he was renamed by his teacher and became Nelson. It was habitual for that time to give African children English names. His father died when he was only nine and Nelson inherited his place at the Council. At the age of 16, according to the tribal traditions, he went through a rite of initiation and only after that entered the college. In 1937 he entered the University of Fort Beaufort where almost all representatives of Tembu dynasty studied.
In 1940 he was expelled for participating at the students’ strike. The same year he got the job in Johannesburg. From 1943 to 1948 he studied at the Law School, but without receiving the degree. He obtained Bachelor of Law title only in 1989. Interestingly enough, the future South African leader, while in prison, studied at the university by correspondence. He was a highly-educated man. After joining the Youth League in 1944, he soon became one of its leaders. During the 1950s he was repeatedly arrested by the police for participating in strikes against human apartheid.
Soon his public speeches were banned and Mandela himself was convicted of treason. However, by 1961 he was cleared. Three years later he was imprisoned. Perhaps, he was the only man in the world who got so much recognition and fame during his imprisonment. He spent eighteen years behind the bars on the island of Robon and in 1982 was sent to the Cape Town prison. Six years later he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to hospital. However he refused to get freedom in exchange for his political views’ betrayal.
Mandela was finally released in 1990. A year later he again took control of ANC - the Youth League. Two years later he was awarded by the Nobel Prize for his courageous actions sent to stop the Apartheid in Africa. 1994 was the turning point in his public career, as he became the President of his own country. What else could be more honorable! The first thing that he did was the new constitution which guaranteed equal right for all South Africans regardless their race, nation, gender of religion. Even after having resigned from presidency he led an active public life.
During his life N. Mandela wrote several books and was awarded by the governments of many countries. He was married three times and had many children, however not all of them are alive. The great leader died at the age of ninety-five. One of his daughters at the moment works as the South African ambassador in Argentina.

Diego Maradona

Diego Maradona (30.10.1960 - 25.11.2020) - Argentinian football player.

Diego Armando Maradona is arguably the greatest footballer that has ever put on a pair of boots. He was originally born in the slums of Villa Fiorito near Buenos Aires as the fifth of eight children. Maradona entered professional football at the astonishing age of 15. By the time he turned 16, Diego was even called in the senior national team of Argentina. Regardless of his talent, Diego was considered too young by coach Cesar Menotti, who rejected him from his selection for the 1978 World Cup. Bitterly disappointed, Maradona watched the tournament from home as his country finished first. In the following four years, Diego dominated his country's league and easily entered the Argentine squad for Spain 1982.
Argentina passed the first stage of the tournament after losing to Belgium, but beating Hungary and Salvador. Maradona managed to leave his mark with two beautiful, but not critical goals. In the first match of the second stage, Maradona is manhandled by his Italian marker, Claudio Gentile. By the following game, Diego's frustration gets him sent off. With two losses, Argentina fail to advance and Diego is again suppressed from unleashing his full potential. Although unsuccessful, the brilliance of the Argentine footballer did not go unnoticed and after the World Cup, he is picked up by the European powerhouse Barcelona. By 1984, Maradona had established himself in Barca and was picked up by the Italian club Napoli.
At the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, Maradona made his return on the World stage in a spectacular manner. After leading his team to a quarter final against England, Diego steals the attention of millions with both his controversial character and technical brilliance. The fuss around the Argentina-England encounter was further elevated by the Falkland Islands conflict, which at that time had turned both countries against each other. Diego opened the game 1-0 by striking the ball with his hand. Unnoticed by the referees, it was ruled a goal. Five minutes later, Maradona single handedly took the ball through the entire English defense with a slalom from midfield right down to the goal. After the match, when confronted with the video footage of the illegal goal, Maradona simply replied "Even if there was a hand, it must have been the hand of God." Maradona silenced his critics by deciding the following semi and final matches. By scoring two goals in the first and with an assist in the second, Maradona practically earned the World Cup for his nation. Maradona's influence on his teammates was carried over to his club side Napoli, as they reached unprecedented heights, winning their first and second Scudetto (1997 and 1990) and the UEFA Cup in 1988/99.
At Italy 1990, all eyes were on Argentina and its brightest star Diego Maradona. Diego came close to replicating his previous success. With Maradona's ability, Argentina defeated Brazil, Yugoslavia and Italy on its way to the final. Most memorable is the semi-final match between Argentina and Italy played at Diego's club home Naples. To the torment of Maradona, the fans at his own club stadium booed him during the match. Nevertheless, he eliminated Italy by scoring in the penalty shootout. The final of the 1990 World Cup, left Diego helpless as Argentina were defeated 0-1 from West Germany with a goal from a questionable penalty.
Since the loss against West Germany, Maradona's career plummeted. In March of 1991, he tested positive for doping and was banned from football for 15 months. Maradona refused to return back to Napoli after the incident and transferred to Sevilla for a year. He eventually went back to Argentina with Newell's Old Boys.
The 1994 World Cup verified that Diego's career in national football is over. He was suspended from the cup after failing another doping test. His team was hurt by this and eventually got eliminated by Romania in the second stage. Shortly after this failure, Diego took on a new career path as a coach. He failed miserably again, unable to remain at a single club for more than four months. By 1995, Maradona was forced to return to the game as a player. He went back to his former club Boca Juniors, and remained there until his last match on 25th of October 1997. Five days later, during his 37th birthday, Maradona announced his retirement from football. Up until 2001, Diego remained away from the playing pitch, periodically entering rehab for cocaine abuse. Diego played in his farewell match on the 10th of November 2001 against a team comprised by some of the greatest footballers in the game including Ferrara, Suker, Stoichkov, Cantona, Higuita, and Romario. One year earlier, Maradona was voted Best Football Player of the Century by a global Internet poll. Controversy was stirred yet again, by his nearly unanimous victory, as FIFA (who find Maradona's image as the King of Football unacceptable) decided to give the same award to Pele as the Best Footballer for the first half of the century.
The great football player died on November 25, 2020.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx (05.05.1818 - 14.03.1883) - German philosopher

Karl Marx was a prominent German economist, philosopher, politician and a public figure. He was a founder of the theory of scientific socialism and the basics of Marxism. He was born in Prussia on May the 5th, 1818. His ancestors were of Jewish decent. Particularly, one of his grandfathers was a Dutch rabbi. His father was a relatively wealthy lawyer, who converted from Judaism to Protestant Christian prior to anti-Semitic craze. Little is known about the future philosopher’s childhood. When he was 17, he entered the University of Bonn. Later on, he transferred to the University of Berlin to study law. Starting from 1837, he was a devoted follower of Hegel’s philosophy. In 1841, he received a degree and became a Doctor of Philosophy. A year later his works appeared in “Rhineland News”. In October of 1842 he became the editor of this newspaper.
However, a year later the newspaper was banned as it supported the opposition of Prussian bourgeoisie. In June of 1843 he married the daughter of his father’s friend, who was an advisor. In autumn of the same year Marx moved to Paris, where he planned to lead a political journal. The only issue of his “German-French Annals” was released in February of 1844. It marked the final transition of the philosopher from idealism to materialism and from revolutionary democracy to communism. Residing in Paris, Marx took up the studies of political economy and French revolution. In 1844 he met Engels, who became his lifelong friend. Together they published “The Holy Family” - a criticizing book on Young Hegelians. In 1845, the Prussian authorities insisted that the newspaper where they worked in France be closed. After that, Karl had to move to Brussels. Engels joined him there a little later.
In 1849, Marx moved to London, where he stayed till the end of his life. There, he began the reorganization of Communist League and the re-establishment of the Central Committee. In 1850, Marx and Engels started publishing the political-economical revue. In September of 1864 he became a member of the International Workingmen’s Association. At the same time, he was the unofficial head of the governing body. During his life in London he collaborated with a number of proletarian and bourgeois newspapers, including the “New York Daily Tribune”. Apart from that he was working on the 2nd and 3rd volumes of the “Capital” and the translation of the 1st one. He helped to prepare the Russian edition of the book, which was published in 1872.
In the 1980s, his health became to deteriorate. He lost his wife in 1881 and his eldest daughter in 1883. The politician died on March 14th, 1883 and was buried in London. During his life he had seven children, but only three daughters survived. The youngest daughter, Eleanor, continued her father’s work and lead the British and international labor movement.

Bob Marley

Bob Marley (06.02.1945 - 11.05.1981) - Jamaican singer.

Bob Marley (nee Robert Nesta Marley) was a famous Jamaican guitarist, singer and composer. He is known as the best reggae performer in the world. Thanks to him, reggae gained popularity outside of Jamaica. He was one of the most prominent supporters of the Rastafari movement and Pan-Africanism. The musician was born on February 6th, 1945, in Nine Mile, Jamaica. His father was a European navy officer and then became an overseer of one Jamaican plantation. Robert didn’t see his father much. Norval Marley died of a heart attack when he was only ten. His mother remarried and had a daughter. Robert’s stepbrother Neville Livingston (also known as Bunny Wailer) later became his music partner.
In the late 1950s, Robert’s family moved to the capital of Jamaica, Kingston. There, living in a poor neighborhood, together with Neville he began doing his first steps in music. After the high school, he worked as a welder for some time. The person who helped him to master the musical skills was Joe Higgs. He gave Marley and Neville free singing lessons. At the age of 18, the singer made his debut with the single from Joe Higgs “Judge Not”. In 1963, Marley organized a band called “The Wailers”. Their first single “Simmer Down” topped all the Jamaican charts. It has been sold in thousands of copies. Despite the success, some musicians left and the band became a trio. Soon, the band totally collapsed and Bob Marley went to work at the car factory.  
As the time passed, he decided to revive “The Wailers”. The band sang in a variety of genres, but their popularity didn’t go outside Jamaica. Their own record company “Tuff Gong” wasn’t successful either. In 1972, Marley signed the contract with an American singer Johnny Nash and wrote two successful songs for him. A year later his band got a contract with one international company and released the first album outside of Jamaica. The song “I Shot The Sheriff” became an international hit. Eric Clapton included it in his album, which helped Bob’s band to gain popularity. Gradually, “The Wailers” started touring America, Europe and Africa.
By the mid-1970s, they’ve already become recognized leaders of reggae. From now on, almost all Bob Marley’s songs were included in the UK charts. Among them, “No woman, no cry”, “Satisfy My Soul”, “Is This Love”. In his native Jamaica Bob Marley became an idol. He was especially respected for his political and religious views. In 1976, he was somehow embroiled in local politics. As a result, there was the attempt on his life. He sustained minor injuries, but soon recovered. In 1977, Marley was diagnosed with malignant melanoma on his toe. He refused amputation, because he was afraid not to be able to play football again. After a series of attempts to treat this disease, he died in 1981. He was 36 years old then. His last words were: “Money can’t buy life”.

Ricky Martin

Ricky Martin (24.12.1971) - Puerto Rican singer.

Ricky Martin (real name Enrique Martin Morales) is a famous Puerto Rican musician, actor and author.  His career began rather early. He was only twelve when he joined the boys’ band “Menudo”. He has released several Hispanic albums with this band in the 1990s. His first English album “Ricky Martin” was an instant success. It was sold in 22 millions of copies and became one of the best-selling albums of all times. The singer was born on December 24th, 1971, in San Juan. His mother was an accountant and his father was a psychologist. When he was only two, his parents divorced. Most of his childhood was spent at his father’s or grandmother’s home. He has some Catalan and Corsican roots.
The boy grew up in a Catholic environment. He started singing at the age of six and he often translated English songs, performed by famous bands. One of his grandfathers was a poet. That’s why Ricky is good at songwriting. He was an active kid and he felt comfortable performing in front of the many people. He always wanted to be in public. At the age of 9 he appeared in several TV commercials. During his junior years he sang with “Menudo”. Then he began developing as a solo singer. In 1990 he was offered a part in Mexican series called “Alcanzar Una Estrella”. The next year he played in the second part of this film.
It was the time when he took his famous nickname “Ricky Martin” and signed a contract with Sony Discos. His albums were highly successful. The album “Me Amaras” sold millions of copies around the world. In 1994, he moved to California to continue his acting career. At first, he was playing the role in TV series “General Hospital”. Then he recorded his third album “A Medio Vivir”, which brought him popularity and recognition in Europe. Several years later he released the “Vuelve” album. Along with that he was chosen to compose the anthem for the FIFA World Cup. Starting from 1999, he began to work on his English albums.
The same year the whole world heard his most successful single “Livin' La Vida Loca”. His English albums included duets with several popular and world famous singers, including Madonna and Christina Aguilera. In 2005, Ricky released an album called “Life”. He was the co-author of most songs from this album. A year later he performed at the Winter Olympics’ closing ceremony in Turin. In addition to the career of the singer and actor, Martin is involved in various social activities. For example, he is the founder of the charity organization and of the camp for the poor. His personal life is full of secrets and rumors. It is known that he has twin sons born by a surrogate mother.

Nestor Makhno

Nestor Makhno (26.10. (O.S.14.10.) 1888 - 06.07.1934) - Ukrainian guerrilla leader.

Nestor Ivanovych Makhno was born on 27 October 1888 in Huliaipole, Novorossiya region of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine). His parents were peasants and he had four siblings. It is known that his parents attempted to change his date of birth as 1889 to defer military duty. Nestor was the youngest child of the family.
When Nestor was 10 months old his father died. Because of destitution Nestor was forced to work as a herdsman at the age of seven. A year later he entered the Second Huliaipole primary school. At that time Nestor worked for the landowners in the summer months. Over the years he left school and began working as a farmhand on the estates of noblemen and on the farms of rich peasants.
When Nestor was 17 years old he started to work in Huliaipole as an apprentice painter. After a while he began working at local iron foundry. Afterwards he became a foundryman there. During this period Nestor Makhno became interested in revolutionary politics. His aspiration was based on his experiences of unfairness at work. Moreover Nestor Makhno protested against the terrorism of the Tsarist regime during the 1905 revolution. As a result he affiliated himself with the anarchist organization. In 1906 he was arrested and then exonerated from blame. A year later the second arrest came but the charges were repudiated. In 1908 he was again arrested when the spy was able to witness against him. Two years later Nestor Makhno was condemned to death by hanging but this sentence was cancelled and he was given life imprisonment. Nestor Makhno was put in Butyrskaya prison where he was influenced by Piotr Arshinov. Arshinov undertook the ideological preparation of Makhno. Following the February Revolution in 1917 Makhno was dismissed.
Nestor Makhno married two times. In 1917 he married Anastasia Vasetskaya. She had a child by him, but he died a week after birth. His second marriage was to Agafya Kuzmenko with whom he had a daughter, Yelena.
Nestor Makhno went down in history as a commander of the Anarchist Black Army. A partisan campaign during the Russian Civil War was led by Makhno. He supported the Bolsheviks, the Ukrainian Directory, the Bolsheviks again, and then began to organize the Free Territory of Ukraine, an anarchist society, but this idea was broken off by the consolidation of Bolshevik power.
In 1925 Nestor Makhno moved to France where he spent the last years of his life. In 1934 he died of osseous tuberculosis in Paris. His ashes are in Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Vladimir Mayakovsky (19.11.(07.11. O.S.) 1893 - 14.04.1930) - Russian poet.

Владимир Маяковский фото, Vladimir Mayakovsky photoHe was born the last of three children in Baghdati, Georgia where his father worked as a forest ranger. His father was of Cossacks and Russian descent while his mother was of Ukrainian descent. Although Mayakovsky spoke Georgian at school and with friends, his family spoke primarily Russian at home. At the age of 14 Mayakovsky took part in socialist demonstrations at the town of Kutaisi, where he attended the local grammar school. After the sudden and premature death of his father in 1906, the family — Mayakovsky, his mother, and his two sisters — moved to Moscow, where he attended School No. 5.
In Moscow Mayakovsky developed a passion for Marxist literature and took part in numerous activities of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party; he was to later become an RSDLP (Bolshevik) member. In 1908, he was dismissed from the Grammar School because his mother was no longer able to afford the tuition fees.
Around this time, Mayakovsky was imprisoned on three occasions for subversive political activities, but being underage, he avoided transportation. During a period of solitary confinement in Butyrka prison in 1909, he began to write poetry, but his poems were confiscated. On his release from prison, he continued working within the socialist movement, and in 1911 he joined the Moscow Art School where he became acquainted with members of the Russian Futurist movement. He became a leading spokesman for the group Gileas (Гилея), and a close friend of David Burlyuk, whom he saw as his mentor.
The 1912 Futurist publication, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (Пощёчина общественному вкусу) contained Mayakovsky's first published poems: "Night" (Ночь), and "Morning" (Утро). Because of their political activities, Burlyuk and Mayakovsky were expelled from the Moscow Art School in 1914.
His work continued in the Futurist vein until 1914. His artistic development then shifted increasingly in the direction of narrative and it was this work, published during the period immediately preceding the Russian Revolution, which was to establish his reputation as a poet in Russia and abroad.
A Cloud in Trousers (1915) was Mayakovsky's first major poem of appreciable length and it depicted the heated subjects of love, revolution, religion, and art written from the vantage point of a spurned lover. The language of the work was the language of the streets, and Mayakovsky went to considerable lengths to debunk idealistic and romanticised notions of poetry and poets.
In the summer of 1915, Mayakovsky fell in love with a married woman, Lilya Brik, and it is to her that the poem "The Backbone Flute" (1916) was dedicated; unfortunately for Mayakovsky, she was the wife of his publisher, Osip Brik. The love affair, as well as his impressions of war and revolution, strongly influenced his works of these years. The poem "War and the World" (1916) addressed the horrors of WWI and "Man" (1917) is a poem dealing with the anguish of love.
Mayakovsky was rejected as a volunteer at the beginning of WWI, and during 1915-1917 worked at the Petrograd Military Automobile School as a draftsman. At the onset of the Russian Revolution, Mayakovsky was in Smolny, Petrograd. There he witnessed the October Revolution. He started reciting poems such as "Left March! For the Red Marines: 1918" (Левый марш (Матросам), 1918) at naval theatres, with sailors as an audience.
After moving back to Moscow, Mayakovsky worked for the Russian State Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) creating — both graphic and text — satirical Agitprop posters. In 1919, he published his first collection of poems Collected Works 1909-1919 (Все сочиненное Владимиром Маяковским). In the cultural climate of the early Soviet Union, his popularity grew rapidly. During 1922-1928, Mayakovsky was a prominent member of the Left Art Front and went on to define his work as 'Communist futurism' (комфут). He edited, along with Sergei Tretyakov and Osip Brik, the journal LEF.
As one of the few Soviet writers who were allowed to travel freely, his voyages to Latvia, Britain, Germany, the United States, Mexico and Cuba influenced works like My Discovery of America (Мое открытие Америки, 1925). He also travelled extensively throughout the Soviet Union.
On a lecture tour in the United States, Mayakovsky met Elli Jones, who later gave birth to his daughter, an event which Mayakovsky only came to know in 1929, when the couple met clandestinely in the south of France, as the relationship was kept secret. In the late 1920s, Mayakovsky fell in love with Tatiana Yakovleva and to her he dedicated the poem "A Letter to Tatiana Yakovleva" (Письмо Татьяне Яковлевой, 1928).
The relevance of Mayakovsky cannot be limited to Soviet poetry. While over years, he was considered the Soviet poet par excellence, he also changed the perceptions of poetry in wider 20th Century culture. His political activism as a propagandistic agitator was rarely understood and often looked upon unfavourably by contemporaries, even close friends like Boris Pasternak. Near the end of the 1920s, Mayakovsky became increasingly disillusioned with Bolshevism and propaganda; his satirical play The Bedbug (клоп, 1929), dealing with the Soviet philistinism and bureaucracy, illustrates this development. His final months were marked by poor health and political as well as private disappointment.
On the evening of April 14, 1930, Mayakovsky shot himself.

Dmitry Medvedev

Dmitry Medvedev (born 14.09.1965) - Russian president.

Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) is a Russian politician, President-elect of Russia and the country's current First Deputy Prime Minister. He was elected President of Russia on March 2, 2008. According to final election results, he won 70.28% of votes with the turnout of over 69.78% of registered voters. The official result of the election was proclaimed on March 7, when Medvedev formally became Russia's president-elect. He is expected to take office on May 7, 2008.
He was appointed first deputy prime minister of the Russian government on November 14, 2005. Formerly Vladimir Putin's chief of staff, he is also the Chairman of Gazprom's board of directors, a post he has held (for the second time) since 2000. On December 10, 2007, he was informally endorsed as a candidate for the forthcoming presidential elections by the largest Russian political party, United Russia, and officially endorsed on December 17, 2007. Medvedev's candidacy was supported by incumbent president Vladimir Putin and pro-presidential parties. A technocrat and political appointee, Medvedev has never held elective office before 2008.
Dmitry Medvedev was born to a family of university teachers and brought up in Kupchino, a proletarian district of Leningrad.
He graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987 (together with Ilya Yeliseyev, Anton Ivanov, Nikolay Vinnichenko and Konstantin Chuychenko) and in 1990 received his PhD in private law from the same university. Anatoly Sobchak, an early democratic politician of the 1980s and 1990s, was one of his professors, and Medvedev later participated in Sobchak's successful Saint Petersburg mayoral campaign. In 1990 he worked in Leningrad Municipal Soviet of People's Deputies. Between 1991 and 1999 he worked as a docent at his old university, now renamed Saint Petersburg State University.
In 1991 - 1996 Medvedev worked as a legal expert for the International Relations Committee (IRC) of the Saint Petersburg Mayor's Office headed by Vladimir Putin. According to the research of critics of Putin's regime, Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky, the committee was involved in numerous business activities including gambling. The connection with gambling business was established through a municipal enterprise called "Neva Chance" "Neva Chance" became a co-owner of the city gambling establishments with an authorized capital usually of 51%. The mayor's office contributed its share not in money, but "by relinquishing the right to collect rent for the facilities that the casinos occupied". The authors concluded that Medvedev "was one of the first people ... in Russia as a whole, who figured out how the government could "join" a joint stock company without breaking existing laws: not by contributing land or real estate, but by contributing rents on land and real estate."
In November 1993, Medvedev became the legal affairs director of Ilim Pulp Enterprise, a St. Petersburg-based timber company. This enterprise was initially registered as a limited liability partnership, and then re-registered as a closed joint stock company Fincell, "50% of whose shares were own by Dmitry Medvedev" In 1998, he was also elected a member of the board of directors of the Bratskiy LPK paper mill. He worked for Ilim Pulp until 1999.
In November 1999 Medvedev became one of several St. Petersburgers brought by Vladimir Putin to top government positions in Moscow. In December of the same year he was appointed deputy head of the presidential staff.
Dmitry Medvedev became one of the politicians closest to President Putin, and during the 2000 elections he was head of the presidential election campaign headquarters. From 2000 to 2001, Medvedev was chair of Gazprom's board of directors. He was then deputy chair from 2001 to 2002. In June of 2002, Medvedev became chair of Gazprom's board of directors for a second time. In October 2003, he replaced Alexander Voloshin as presidential chief of staff. In November 2005, he was appointed by President Vladimir Putin as First Deputy Prime Minister, First Deputy Chairman of the Council for Implementation of the Priority National Projects attached to the President of the Russian Federation, and Chairman of the Council's Presidium.
A mild-mannered person, Dmitry Medvedev is considered to be a moderate liberal pragmatic, an able administrator and a loyalist of Putin. He is also known as a leader of "the clan of St.Petersburg lawyers", one of political groups formed around Vladimir Putin during his presidency. Other members of this group are the co-owner of the Ilim Pulp Corporation Dmitry Kozak, speaker of Russian Federation Council Sergei Mironov, Yuri Molchanov, and head of Putin's personal security service Viktor Zolotov.
Following his appointment as First Deputy Prime Minister, many political observers expected Medvedev to be nominated as Putin's successor for the 2008 presidential elections. There were other potential candidates, such as Sergey Ivanov and Viktor Zubkov, but on December 10, 2007, President Putin announced that Medvedev was his preferred successor. Four parties supporting Putin also declared Medvedev to be their candidate to the post - United Russia, Fair Russia, Agrarian Party of Russia and Civilian Power. United Russia held its party congress on December 17, 2007 where by secret ballot of the delegates, Medvedev was officially endorsed as their candidate in the 2008 presidential election. He formally registered his candidacy with the Central Election Commission on December 20, 2007 and said he would step down as chairman of Gazprom, since under the current laws, the president is not permitted to hold another post. Sources close to Gazprom and Medvedev have told the Vedomosti newspaper that Medvedev may be replaced by Putin at Gazprom. His registration was formally accepted as valid by the Russian Central Election Commission on January 21, 2008.
Political analysts believe that Putin's choice of a successor would coast to an easy election-day victory, as pre-election opinion polls have indicated that a substantial majority of potential voters will back Putin's chosen candidate for president. An opinion poll by Russia’s independent polling organization, the Levada Center, conducted over the period December 21-24, 2007 indicated that when presented a list of potential candidates, 79% of Russians were ready to vote for Medvedev if the election were immediately held. In his first speech since he was endorsed, Medvedev announced that, as President, he would appoint Vladimir Putin to the post of prime minister to head the Russian government. Although constitutionally barred from a third consecutive presidential term, such a role would allow Putin to continue as an influential figure in Russian politics (the constitution also allows him to return to the presidency later). Some analysts have been quick to point out that such a statement shows that Medvedev recognizes that he would only be a figurehead president. Putin has pledged that he would accept the position of prime minister should Medvedev be elected president. Although Putin has pledged not to change the distribution of authority between president and prime minister, many analysts are expecting a shift in the center of power from the presidency to the prime minister post should Putin assume the latter under a Medvedev presidency. Election posters have portrayed the pair side-by-side with the slogan "Together we will win".
In January 2008, Medvedev launched his presidential campaign with stops in the regions. With preliminary results showing he would probably win the March 2, 2008 presidential election by a landslide, Medvedev vowed to work closely with the man who tapped him for the job, President Vladimir Putin.
Prior to the election, British news outlet The Guardian quoted Marina Dashenkova of the GOLOS Association, Renat Suleymanov of the Communist party in Novosibirsk, Vladimir Bespalov of the Vladivostok parliament and others accusing the Russian government of pressuring government employees and students to vote. However, Russia Today reported that few of the election monitors in attendance found this to be the case.
The GOLOS Association stated that "the Election Day was held in a relatively quiet atmosphere in contrast to the State Duma election day. Such large-scale violations observed then as campaigning next to polling stations, transporting of voters, intimidation of voters and others were practically non-existent."
According to observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Russia's 2008 presidential election probably reflected what would have been the will of voters had the election been completely free and fair, but questioned the fairness of the poll.Andreas Gross, head of the group from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), said the vote was a "reflection of the will of the electorate whose democratic potential unfortunately has not been tapped." and questioned fairness of the vote due to unfair media access adding the election "repeats most of the flaws seen in the parliamentary elections last December."
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe member Bernard Perego confirmed the election met international standards. “After we discussed what we saw, we came to the conclusion that the election was excellent in the way it was organized and that it met Western standards,” Perego said.
Fellow Council member Andreas Gross, who headed the Council delegation to Russia, stated; "We think there is not freedom in this election".
Germany and France made clear the vote did not meet their criteria for a democratic election, but alongside Britain and the European Union they congratulated Medvedev on a victory they said appeared to reflect the will of the Russian people.
In December 2005 Medvedev was named Person of the Year by Expert magazine, an influential and respected Russian business weekly. He shared the title in 2005 with Alexei Miller, CEO of Gazprom.
Dmitry Medvedev is married and has a son named Ilya (b. 1996). His wife, Svetlana Vladimirovna Medvedeva nee Linnik, was both his childhood friend and school sweetheart. They wed several years after their graduation from secondary school in 1982. Medvedev is one of the authors of a textbook on civil law for universities first published in 1991 (the 6th edition of Civil Law. In 3 Volumes. was published in 2007) and is regarded as "brilliant" by many civil law scholars. He is the author of a textbook for universities entitled, Questions of Russia's National Development, first published in 2007, concerning the role of the Russian state in social policy and economic development. He is also the lead coauthor of a book of legal commentary entitled, A Commentary on the Federal Law "On the State Civil Service of the Russian Federation", scheduled for publication in 2008. This work considers the Russian Federal law on the Civil service, which went into effect on July 27, 2004, from multiple perspectives - scholarly, jurisprudential, practical, enforcement- and implementation-related.
Medvedev has often represented himself as a devoted fan of hard rock, listing Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin as his favorite bands. He is a collector of their original vinyl records and has previously said that he has collected all of the recordings of Deep Purple. As a youth, he was making copies of their records, although these bands were then on the official state-issued blacklist. In February 2008, Medvedev and Sergey Ivanov attended a Deep Purple concert in Moscow together.
Medvedev stands 162 centimeters (5'4") in height.
Despite a busy schedule, he always reserves an hour each morning and again each evening to swim and lift weights. He swims 1,500 meters (approximately 0.93 miles), twice a day. He also jogs, plays chess, and practices yoga. Among his hobbies are reading the works of Mikhail Bulgakov, and following his hometown professional soccer team, FC Zenit Saint Petersburg.
He keeps an aquarium in his office and cares for his fish himself.
He is a fan of an Internet slang dialect common among Russian youth, Olbanian, and even suggested it should be studied in schools to promote greater literacy in the Internet and modern culture in Russia.

Dmitri Mendeleev

Dmitri Mendeleev (08.02. [O.S. 27.01.] 1834 - 02.02. [O.S. 20.01.] 1907) - Russian chemist and inventor.

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was born on 8 February 1834 near Tobolsk. He was a Russian inventor and chemist. The most famous invention of Mendeleev is periodic table of elements.
Mendeleev’s parents were Maria Mendeleeva (nee Kornilieva) and Ivan Mendeleev. According to the different sources there were approximately seventeen children in their family. Mendeleev was the youngest child. His father worked as a teacher but he became blind and stopped working. As a result Maria Mendeleeva began to work and re-established the glass factory which belonged to her family. It is also known that Mendeleev’s grandfather was a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church. When Mendeleev was 13 he entered the Gymnasium in Tobolsk.
In 1849 his family moved to Saint Petersburg. In 1850 Mendeleev joined The Main Pedagogical Institute. Following the graduation he developed tuberculosis and was forced to relocate to the Crimean Peninsula. Living there, Mendeleev became a science master of the Simferopol gymnasium #1. In 1857 after recovery he arrived in Saint Petersburg.
From 1859 to 1861 Mendeleev worked in Heidelberg and researched the capillarity of liquids. In April 1862 he married Feozva Nikitichna Leshcheva. Two years later Mendeleev became a professor at the Saint Petersburg Technological Institute. In 1865 he became a professor at Saint Petersburg State University. The same year Mendeleev completed his dissertation "On the Combinations of Water with Alcohol". By 1871 Saint Petersburg was known as a center for chemistry research. In 1876 Mendeleev fell in love with Anna Ivanova Popova. In 1881 he made a proposal of marriage to her. The following year Mendeleev married her. The same year he divorced his first wife. Mendeleev had two children from his first marriage: Olga and Vladimir. His other children from the second marriage were Lyubov, a pair of twins and son Ivan. It should be noted that Lyubov was the wife of Russian poet Alexander Blok.
Mendeleev obtained a lot of awards from different scientific organizations but he resigned from Saint Petersburg University in 1890. Three years later Mendeleev was appointed Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures. His task was to formulate new standards of vodka. According to the new standards created by Mendeleev all vodka had to be made at forty percent alcohol by volume. He also researched the composition of petroleum and made a contribution to the foundation of the first Russian oil refinery.
In 1906 the Nobel Committee for Chemistry suggested to the Swedish Academy to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1906 to Mendeleev for his discovery of the periodic system. This proposal was approved. But at the full meeting of the Academy one of the members recommended the candidacy of Henri Moissan. Moreover Svante Arrhenius who had influence on the Academy also advised to reject the candidacy of Mendeleev. The contemporaries state that Arrhenius was against Mendeleev because of his critique of Arrhenius's dissociation theory. As a result the candidacy of Mendeleev was rejected.
Dmitri Mendeleev died of influenza in Saint Petersburg in 1907.

Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury (05.09.1946 - 24.11.1991) - British singer.

Freddie Mercury (nee Farrokh Bulsara) was a famous British rock singer and songwriter. He was best known as the lead singer of the “Queen”. He was the author of such world hits as “We Are the Championship” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Farrokh was born on September 5th, 1946, on the island of Zanzibar, in the family of Parsis. His name meant “beautiful” and “happy”. His father was a cashier at the Supreme Court. When he was six, his sister Kashmira was born. From 1954 he attended the St Peter’s School in Panchgani and lived with his uncle and aunt. His name was difficult to pronounce, so local kids started calling him Freddie.
At school, Freddie didn’t like sports much. However, he was the champion in ping-pong. Aged 12, he won the first Cup. Apart from that, he loved painting and often made drawings of surrounding people. And, of course, he was crazy about music from the very young age. He loved listening to music and singing. The surrounding music was mostly Indian, but there were some western songs too. Hus musical talent was soon noticed by the headmaster of the school, He wrote a letter to his parents asking to give him the opportunity to study music seriously. That’s when he started attending the piano classes. When he was 12, together with his friends and classmates, he organized the first rock band called “The Hectics”. They played at school parties and various anniversaries.
Having graduated from school, he returned to Zanzibar. In 1964, his family was forced to leave the country because of the revolution, during which thousands of Arabs and Indians were killed. They moved to England and temporarily lived at their relatives’ house in Middlesex County. Aged 17, the future singer chose to enter the Art College. At the college he met Tim Staffel, who invited him to participate in his band’s rehearsals. Inspired by their music, he started singing again. When Staffel decided to quit the “Smile” band in 1970, Freddie became the lead vocalist. That’s when Freddie changed his surname to Mercury and the band’s name to “Queen”. He also created the logo for the band, including the elements of British heraldry.
After long searching he found the guitarist John Deacon and in 1972 they could already release the first album. The band quickly became world famous. In 1979, the singer was invited to perform with the British Royal Ballet. A year later, he completely changed his image and started wearing a moustache and short hair. He started leading his solo career and released the album “Mr. Bad Guy” (1985). There was the time when he performed together with a world famous opera singer Monserrat Caballe. Since 1986, the press announced that Freddie was seriously ill, but he denied the rumors. Only in November 1991 he officially confirmed that he had AIDS. The same month he died of bronchial pneumonia. In 1992, many famous people and his friends gave a special concert to commemorate the legendary singer.

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe (01.06.1926 - 05.08.1962) - American actress.

Marilyn Monroe (real name Norma Jeane Mortenson) was an American actress, who became an idol for millions of people. She was considered to be the major sex symbol of the 20th century. Apart from being an actress, she was a singer and a model. She was born on June 1st, 1926, in Los Angeles. She was the third child of a film installer Gladys Baker. Her biological father was unknown. When she was six months old, she was baptized and named after her mother Baker instead of Mortenson. Norma’s mother had a number of financial and mental problems. That’s why the girl spent most of her childhood in foster families and orphanages. For some time she lived with the neighboring family of Della Monroe.
Her tough childhood helped her to mature quickly and to take independent decisions. One of her adolescent decisions was to marry James Edward Doherty. She met him, while studying at high school. She was only 16, when she left the school and started living with this guy. After their wedding James got a job in the merchant navy, while she went to work at the aircraft factory. She met a prominent photographer there, who offered her to become a model. Soon she began to gain popularity and worldwide fame as a sex symbol. The image of sexy blonde as well as her new name was made up by a 53-year-old film agent John Hyde. He also persuaded her to make a few small cosmetic surgeries.
However, the main thing that he did for Marilyn was the arrangement of the contract with “20th Century Fox”. At first she went there to work at the statistics department, but a year and a half later everyone in the USA knew her name. By that time Hyde already died of a heart attack. She was doing her own steps in cinematography. Her first major role was in “Ladies of the Chorus” (1948). Two years later two more successful films were shot: “All about Eve” and “The Asphalt Jungle”. Her roles weren’t highly paid at first. But starting with “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”(1953) her fee had grown to thousands of dollars. Soon Marilyn got divorced and fell in love with a famous baseball player Joe DiMaggio. They got married in 1954, but this marriage didn’t last a year.
Her next husband was a famous playwright Henry Miller, who became a father, a friend, a guardian and a psychoanalyst for her. However, soon she started an affair with the French actor Yves Montand, which lasted only for a couple of months. But for Miller this was a solid reason for the divorce. After this divorce she was highly depressed and once again she began to seek salvation dating other men. The list of her lovers included Frank Sinatra, Henry Rosenfeld, Charlie Chaplin Jr., etc. At some point Peter Lawford introduced her to the Kennedy family. She fell in love with John Kennedy, who wasn’t the president of the country yet. Their relationship remained a secret for a long time. Life of a great actress and the sexiest woman of the 20th century was a short one. She died on August 5th, 1962, in her home. Her lifeless body was found near the bed in the morning.

Amadeus Mozart

Amadeus Mozart (27.01.1756 - 05.12.1791) - Austrian composer.

Musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born to Leopold Mozart and his wife Anna Maria Pertl in Salzburg, Austria on January 27, 1756. Leopold Mozart was a successful composer and violinist and served as assistant concertmaster at the Salzburg court. Mozart and his older sister Maria Anna "Nannerl" were the couple's only surviving children, and their musical education began at a very young age. The archbishop of the Salzburg court, Sigismund von Schrattenbach was very supportive of the Mozart children's remarkable activities.
By the time Mozart was five years old, he began composing minuets. The next year, he and his sister were taken to Munich and Vienna to play a series of concert tours. Both children played the harpsichord, but Mozart had also mastered the violin. In 1763, when Mozart was seven years old, his father took leave of his position at the Salzburg court to take the family on an extended concert tour of western Europe. Mozart and his sister performed in the major musical centers, including Stuttgart, Mannheim, Mainz, Frankfurt, Brussels, Paris, London, and Amsterdam. They did not return to Salzburg until 1766. During this time, Mozart continued to compose, completing his first symphony at age nine and publishing his first sonatas the same year.
After spending less than a year in Salzburg, the family again departed for Vienna, where Mozart completed his first opera La finta semplice in 1768. Much to Leopold's frustration, the opera was not performed until the following year in Salzburg. Shortly thereafter, Mozart was appointed honorary Konzertmeister at the Salzburg court.
In 1769, father and son traveled to Italy and toured for more than a year in Rome, Milan, Florence, Naples, and Bologna. While in Italy, Mozart completed another opera, Mitridate, re di Ponto, received a papal audience, passed admission tests to the Accademia Filarmonica, and performed many concerts. Mozart then returned to Salzburg, but traveled to Italy for two shorter journeys in October 1771 and October 1772 through March 1773. During this time he completed two more operas, Ascanio in Alba (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772), eight symphonies, four divertimentos, and several other works.
Archbishop von Schrattenbach, who was a great supporter of Mozart, died in 1771 and was succeeded by Hieronymus von Colloredo. Although Archbishop Colloredo was a less generous employer, Mozart continued in his Salzburg post and worked diligently from 1775 to 1777. However, in an effort to secure a better position, Mozart obtained leave from Salzburg, and set out with his mother in 1777. They traveled through Munich, Augsburg, and Mannheim, but Mozart was not offered a post. The next year they continued on to Paris, where Mozart composed the Paris Symphony. In Paris, Mozart's mother fell ill and soon after the symphony's premiere, she died.
Several months later, Mozart returned to Salzburg and was given the post of court organist as well as Konzertmeister. He produced numerous works during this period, including the famous Coronation Mass. In 1780, he was commissioned to compose an Italian opera for Munich. Idomeneo, re di Creta was completed the next year and was very successful. Soon after, Mozart was summoned to Vienna by Archbishop Colloredo, but unhappy with his treatment there, Mozart requested a discharge.
Mozart remained in Vienna and in 1782, against his father's wishes, he married Constanze Weber. They had six children of which two survived. That same year, he completed the opera Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, which was an immediate success. From 1782 until 1787, when Mozart was appointed emperor Joseph II's chamber composer, Mozart was very productive. His works from this period include The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and numerous piano concertos. Unfortunately, Mozart's income did not keep up with his success. He and his wife lived extravagantly and were continually in debt.
In 1787, Mozart was appointed to the post of Kammercmusicus, although the salary did little to lessen the couple's financial hardships. The post required Mozart to compose dance music for court balls. In addition, he completed several symphonies and another opera, among other works. In 1791, Mozart was commissioned to compose a score to Schikaneder's The Magic Flute. He also began working on a commissioned requiem. The Magic Flute was performed in September with due success.
In November, Mozart fell ill, and on December 5, 1791, he died. His death was thought to be a result of "rheumatic inflammatory fever" or kidney failure. It was rumored Mozart was poisoned by a fellow composer named Salieri, but no evidence was ever produced to prove it. Mozart was buried in an unmarked grave, as was customary for those of his social standing, in Vienna.

Eddie Murphy

Eddie Murphy (born 03.04.1961) - American actor.

Funny, they say, is hard. Funny floats in the ether and only the chosen can snatch it down. So, to be the funniest of them all is a challenge few can rise to. Steve Martin did it, Robin Williams too. On a more underground tip, there were the late greats Sam Kinison and Bill Hicks. And, of course, there was Eddie Murphy, king of early-Eighties comedy and, amazingly, with the sequels to the enormous popular Dr Dolittle and Nutty Professor, still a major contender today.
Edward Regan Murphy was born in the Bushwick projects of Brooklyn, New York, on the 3rd of April, 1961. His father was a policeman. His mother, Lillian, was a telephone operator. Sadly, they divorced when Eddie was 3 and, even more sadly, his father was killed by a new girlfriend when the boy was just 8. Living with Lillian and his brother Charles Q Murphy (now an actor and screenwriter), Eddie stayed in Brooklyn till he was ten. Then Lillian, along with her new husband Vernon Lynch (a former boxer then employed as a foreman at Breyers Ice Cream plant)) took the boys, plus Lynch's son (also named Vernon), to Roosevelt, Long Island. This was a predominantly white, middle-class area thats black population increased sharply throughout the Sixties and Seventies. It also spawned Howard Stern, Julius Erving and Public Enemy rapper Chuck D.
So Eddie, a natural mimic schooled in the streets and now the suburbs, expanded his repertoire of characters. Starting with Bullwinkle and Sylvester The Cat, he began to impersonate the stars of the day, as well as invent new characters of his own. At Roosevelt High School he'd carry a briefcase full of joke-books with him, and was often voted Most Popular Student, even winning over the teachers, who'd laugh as they sent him to the Principal's office for his hilarious insubordination. As well as singing in a local R&B band (they'd steal supermarket trollies to transport their equipment), Eddie was damn funny, and he knew it. Heavily influenced by his hero, Richard Pryor, he worked on his monologues and impersonations - quickly mastering Lionel Richie, Bill Cosby, Al Green and Elvis Presley - and made his stage debut at the Roosevelt Youth Centre on the 9th of July, 1976.
As Murphy himself says, once he started, he couldn't stop. He began performing regularly in youth centres and bars, taking $25-$50 a time, money he used to finance his enrolment at Nassau Community College, Garden City, New York. Very quickly, he made his name, soon appearing at New York's Comic Strip. Then, at 19, came the big break when he was invited to become a minor player on the Saturday Night Live team. He didn't stay minor for long. With an ever-expanding range of killer characters, he became the show's most popular comedian. He was the street-smart hustler Velvet Jones, with his book I Wanna Be A Ho: he was the enraged militant film critic Raheem Abdul Muhammad: he was the jailbird poet Tyrone Green: and, most famous of all, he was the sour-mouthed celebrity Gumby.
His comedy launched him on a recording career. In 1982, there was Eddie Murphy, an album recorded live at the Comic Strip. The next year there was another, Eddie Murphy, Comedian, that won a Grammy as Best Comedy LP. He'd already been nominated for the hit single Boogie In Your Butt - he was, after all, a musician too. In 1985, he'd release the How Could It Be album, produced by Rick James and Stevie Wonder (Murphy also did a spectacular Stevie). This delivered a million-selling single in Party All The Time, and was followed by 1989's So Happy, helmed by Nile Rogers and Cameo's Larry Blackmon. 1993 would bring Love's Alright, featuring collaborations with both Michael Jackson and Shabba Ranks.
Already a big name in the States, in 1982 his star went truly into the ascendant. Director Walter Hill, famed for The Warriors and Southern Comfort, had been casting for a partner for tough-guy Nick Nolte in his latest thriller, 48 Hours. Murphy was taken on, and the script rewritten to suit his sharp and often foul-mouthed patter. But one thing was missing. Having been mellowed by life in Roosevelt and his speedy success, Murphy lacked the rage necessary to play the touchy convict given a two-day release to help bust an escaped killer. Fortunately, he was taught the requisite tricks by acting coach David Proval (later to star as the extremely angry Richie Aprile in The Sopranos).
One sight of Murphy on the big screen and you knew he'd make it. Wrapped in shades and headphones and shrieking out a wince-making version of Roxanne, he was immediately in your face. Then, wisecracking like crazy, going head-to-head with Nolte, and subduing and taunting a bar full of disapproving whites, he proceeded to steal the show. Now, aside from two brilliant comedy videos - Delirious and Raw - it was films all the way. First came the smart comedy Trading Places, with Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis, then his first headlining role, in Beverly Hills Cop. As renegade detective Axl Foley (a part originally intended for Sylvester Stallone), he went down a storm, with the movie becoming one of the Top 10 grossers of all time.
There followed a couple of duds in Best Defence and The Golden Child, but then Murphy struck paydirt again with Beverly Hills Cop 2 and Coming To America, in the latter again playing a variety of roles. Keen to build his own entertainments empire, he now tried his own project, as director, writer and star of Harlem Nights. He'd often be credited with providing the story for his movies, as well as acting as executive producer - he actually took credit for Coming To America, then was forced by law to give the credit to columnist Art Buchwald.
A black ensemble piece, where Murphy got to work alongside Richard Pryor, the gangster-comedy Harlem Nights took a dreadful drubbing from the critics. Yet some of us found the movie - anarchic, cruel, fast and often sidesplittingly funny - to be Murphy's best so far. Perhaps for some tastes he'd got too big, too fast. Perhaps it was just too black. Whatever, after Another 48 Hours, Murphy's career stalled for some six years. His personal life was in turmoil too, he now admits fame when straight to his head. Having in the early Eighties been briefly engaged to biology student Lisa Figueroa, he'd since suffered paternity suits from Nicolle Radar, Paulette McNeely and Tamara Hood (with the last of whom he has son, Christian). Though in 1988 he'd met Nicole Mitchell and had a daughter, Brea, with her, followed by three further children - Miles, Shane Audra and Zola Ivy - he did not settle down with the family till some years later. They now all live in a 22-room colonial mansion called Bubble Hill (Bubble being slang for Party) in Englewood, New Jersey. Murphy has said he never knew whether the many women who pursued him really wanted him, or his money and status. Mitchell, a rich model from the age of 10, had a social position and jam-packed bank account of her own.
As said, the early Nineties were, cinematically speaking, horrible for Murphy. The Distinguished Gentleman, Boomerang, and Vampire In Brooklyn were all grim fare - desperate ideas, poorly executed. Even Beverly Hills Cop could not save him, the third instalment being a wretched affair. There'd be a couple more downers too, with Metro and Holy Man (a financial flop, but not a bad movie at all - Murphy certainly coming back into form). Really, Murphy ought to have been finished. Instead, he played to his strengths and came raging back. In a remake of the Jerry Lewis vehicle, The Nutty Professor, aided by some extraordinary special effects, Murphy played the painfully obese Professor Sherman Klump with aplomb and no little pathos. He also played Klump's sleazy love-god alter-ego Buddy Love, and the whole of Klump's family: his lecherous granny: his longsuffering mum: his crude dad: his thin-skinned brother, all of them. He spent 80 days in heavy make-up, famously not complaining once. The film was genuinely superb and a deserved mega-hit. Murphy found himself nominated for a Golden Globe (as he had been for 48 Hours, Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop) but didn't win. Incredibly, the only major prize this masterful entertainer has ever won was a Golden Raspberry for Harlem Nights.
Before he could truly enjoy his newfound success though, there was another hurdle to negociate. At 4.45 one morning in May,1997, Murphy - who couldn't sleep and was on his way to the newstand - saw a woman in distress on Santa Monica Boulevard and offered her a lift. Or so his story went. The policemen who stopped him said the woman was a transvestite prostitute with a warrant out on her. There were no charges for Murphy, but the transvestite, 20-year-old Atisone Seiuli (known as Shalomar), told a reporter that Murphy had placed $200 on her leg and asked her what kind of sex she liked. Worse, other transvestites came out of the woodwork, claiming they'd had sex with Murphy. He sued both the Globe and the National Enquirer for $5 million, for slander, libel and invasion of privacy, then pulled out. The story ended sadly one year later when Seiuli was found dead on the street, dressed only in bra, panties and towel. Apparently, she was locked out of her apartment, attempted to use the towel to swing from the roof into an open window, and fell.
With the scandal over, Murphy continued upwards. Disney's Mulan was a big hit while Dr Dolittle was even bigger than The Nutty Professor. Then came The PJs, a foamation TV series where Murphy provided the voice of Thurgood Stubbs, chief superintendant of a housing project. It was a huge hit that, with 22 million viewers, gave the Fox network some of its best-ever ratings. Next Murphy starred alongside Martin Lawrence in the incarceration comedy Life, and with Steve Martin in the critically acclaimed Bowfinger. Then came another monster hit with Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps, and yet another when he provided the voice of a sassy donkey in the animated Shrek. Then there was Dr Dolittle 2 - Murphy not being one to shy away from sequels.
2002 saw Eddie in Showtime, playing a maverick rookie cop who has to team up with hard-bitten veteran Robert De Niro in a reality-based TV cop show, produced by Rene Russo. It was an above-average comedy, not unakin to 48 Hrs. After this came The Adventures Of Pluto Nash, where a clubowner in outer space battles the intergalactic Mob. Then there was I Spy, based on the Sixties TV show, where Eddie played a boxer helping the US government recover a missing jet (Owen Wilson, Famke Janssen and Malcolm McDowell co-starred). And there was yet more comedy in Shrek 2 (with Murphy handed a much bigger part after his success in the original) and The Incredible Shrinking Man, directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans, a man hugely influenced by Murphy.
With hits guaranteed for the next two years, and having received $20 million each for the Nutty Professor and Dr Dolittle sequels, Murphy can perhaps try again for that empire. He does give money away - to the AIDS Foundation, the Martin Luther King Jr Centre, various cancer charities, he donated $100,000 to the Screen Actors' Guild's strike relief fund - but he reinvests heavily in his own organisations. Having been burned so badly in the Eighties, he likes to surround himself with people he can trust too. His cousin Ray looks after him, his childhood friend Clint Smith is VP of his TV company, while Lillian and Vernon help out with Panda Merchandising, which controls the rights to Eddie's products. What he needs most though, is a screenwriter he can trust. That way, and only that way, can this most gifted of performers shine for many a year to come.

Napoleon I

Napoleon I (15.08.1769 - 05.05.1821) - Emperor of the French

Napoleon I Bonaparte was a brilliant military leader and a statesman, who laid the foundation of the modern French state. He came from a family of a humble Corsican nobleman, but the heights that he reached were well noticed in the world. Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio which is the capital of Corsica. There were eight children in his family. At junior age he was sent to study in the Brienne military school in France.
In 1784 he entered the Parisian military academy and a year later joined the artillery troops. He was rather enthusiastic about the start of the French Revolution. In fact, he was appointed a Chief of artillery while returning Toulon occupied by the British. He led a brilliant operation which brought him the rank of brigadier general at the age of 24. In 1795 he became the Commander of the Italian army. The next year he got a chance to show all his leadership skills during the Italian campaign. That was the time when Napoleon gained European fame.
He was very proud of his first large victory. Soon he was sent to run more serious expeditions at the Middle East. The French army was defeated, but it wasn’t Napoleon’s fault as he left the army long before the end of the campaign. He headed to Italy to fight Suvorov’s army. By the time he returned to Paris the country was on the peak of crisis. He was rather popular among the citizens and highly respected. That’s why it was of no difficulty to stage a coup d'etat and proclaim the consulate. In 1802 he was appointed a lifelong consul and two years later - an emperor.
His internal policy was meant to strengthen the all-round personal power. He undertook a number of important reforms in the legal and administrative areas. In fact, when he came to power France was at war with some neighboring countries. That’s why he arranged another Italian campaign to eliminate the outer threats. Moreover, as a result of his military campaigns most of the Western European countries fell under the French subordination. Even Austria, Prussia and Russia were forced to enter the Union that he created.
The first years of his regime were met by French people with enthusiasm. They saw the savior of the motherland in Napoleon. However, the constant war and increasing economic crisis made people exhausted. The bourgeoisie was dissatisfied with the need to spend that much money on everlasting wars. In 1812 the Napoleon’s regime collapsed. It happened right after the Russian troops defeated his army. Two years later he was forced to abdicate. The only title he retained was that of the emperor’s. Soon he was sent into exile on the Elba Island in the Mediterranean.
His second exile, that lasted six years, was on the island of St. Helena. On May, 1821 he died there, but his ashes were brought to Paris in 1840. During his life he was married twice, but had only one heir from Marie-Louise - the Austrian emperor’s daughter. Napoleon I went down in history as an outstanding person with high intellectual abilities and amazing capacity for work.

Mark Twain

Mark Twain (10.12. (28.11. O.S.) 1821 - 08.01.1878 (28.12. 1877. O.S.) - Russian poet.

Nekrasov was born the son of a petty Russian officer and a Polish gentrywoman. He grew up on his father's estate, Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province, near the banks of the Volga River, where he observed the hard labor of the Russian barge haulers. This image of social injustice, so similar to Dostoevsky's childhood recollection of a beaten-upon courier, was compounded by the behavior of his tyranical father. The latter's drunken rages against both his peasants and his wife determined the subject matter of Nekrasov's major poems—a verse portrayal of the plight of the Russian peasant, using his language and ideas.
Nekrasov was a poor student, reaching only the fifth grade at his local gymnasium. In 1838 his father, bent on a military career for his son, sent the 16-year-old Nekrasov to Petersburg for officer training. He quickly lost interest in the military academy and came in contact with students there, including a friend from his school days. He was encouraged to study for the university entrance exams. Though failing to score high enough be admitted as a full time student, he was able to audit classes, which he did from 1839 to 1841. Having quit the army in favor of his studies, Nekrasov's father stopped sending him money, and Nekrasov lived in extreme want, briefly living in a homeless shelter. Shortly thereafter Nekrasov authored his first collection of poetry, Dreams and Sounds, published under the name "N. N.". Though the poet V. A. Zhukovsky expressed a favorable opinion of the beginner's work, it was promptly dismissed as Romantic doggerel by V. G. Belinsky, the most important Russian literary critic of the first half of 19th century, in Отечественные Записки (Notes of the Fatherland). Nekrasov personally went to the booksellers and removed all the copies of the failed collection.
Ironically, Nekrasov joined the staff of NoF with Belinsky in the early 1840's and became close friends with the critic. From 1843-46 Nekrasov edited various anthologies for the journal, one of which, "A Petersburg Collection," included Dostoevsky's first novel, Poor Folk. At the end of 1846, Nekrasov acquired The Contemporary from Pyotr Pletnev. Much of the staff of NoF, including Belinksy, abandoned Pyotr Krayevsky's journal for Nekrasov's. Before his death, Belinsky granted Nekrasov rights to publish various articles and other material originally planned for an almanac, to be called the Leviathan.
Together with Stanitsky, Nekrasov published two very long picaresque novels: Three Countries of the World and Dead Lake.
By the middle of the 1850's Nekrasov had become seriously ill. He left Russia for Italy to recover. It was around this time that Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Dobrolyubov, two of the most radical and unabashedly revolutionary writers of the time, became the major critics for the journal. Nekrasov was attacked by his old friends for allowing his journal to become the vehicle for Chernyshevsky's sloppy and often poorly written broadside attacks on polite Russian society. By 1860 I. S. Turgenev, the naysayer of nihilism, refused to have any more of his work published in the journal.
After the closure of the Contemporary in 1866, Nekrasov obtained from his old enemy Kraevsky ownership of NoF. He achieved new success with the journal.
In 1877 Nekrasov, never very healthy, became ill for the last time. He then composed his Last Songs, filled with the agony of the shrivelled and now dying poet.
Tomb of Nikolay Nekrasov at the Novodevichy Cemetery (Saint Petersburg).Despite biting frost, his funeral was attended by many. Dostoevsky gave the keynote eulogy, noting that Nekrasov was the greatest Russian poet since Pushkin and Lermontov. A section of the crowd, youthful followers of Chernyshevsky who connected the verse of the deceased poet with the revolutionary cause chanted "No, greater!"
Who is Happy in Russia?
Nekrasov's most important work was (Who is Happy in Russia?) (1873-1876). It tells the story of seven peasants who set out to ask various elements of the rural population if they are happy, to which the answer is never satisfactory. The poem is noted for its rhyme scheme: "several unrhymed iambic tetrameters ending in a pyrrhic are succeeded by a clausule in iambic trimeter" (Terras 319). This scheme resembles Russian folk song.

Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson (born 22.04.1937) - American actor.

After four full decades of film-making, three of them spent at the very top of his profession, Jack Nicholson is arguably the most famous actor alive. As far back as 1983, at that year's Oscar ceremony, host Billy Crystal announced the presenter of the Best Picture award. He just said one word - Jack - and an audience of billions knew exactly who was about to stroll onstage. He's a writer, a director and a producer. By 2002, he'd been Oscar-nominated on eleven separate occasions. He's been romantically linked to many of Hollywood's most beautiful actresses. He's even had a book written about his taste in food - Cooking For Jack. Again, which other Jack could they possibly mean?
Nicholson's upbringing was strange - he would not discover HOW strange till he was well into his thirties. He was born on the 22nd of April, 1937, in St Vincent's Hospital, New York City (though there is apparently no record of his birth anywhere), then his mother took him back to her hometown of Neptune, New Jersey, where he was raised by his grandmother, always believing that his own mother was his older sister. He remained unaware of the situation till informed in 1974 by a journalist who'd been researching a feature on him. The details remain sketchy as, by that time, both his mother and grandmother were dead, both having taken their secret to the grave, and Nicholson subsequently had next-to-no contact with his real father. But this is the generally accepted truth.
Nicholson's mother, June, was a highly talented dancer and showgirl who, by the age of 17, was already making a name with the renowned Earl Carroll Dancers (her stage-name was June Nilson). At 17, she met the handsome, Neapolitan-extracted Don Furcillo-Rose, a charismatic showman who'd later own thoroughbreds and run a chain of beauty parlours. The couple fell deeply in love but disaster quickly struck them when June fell pregnant. Rose was not yet divorced from his first wife, so he could not marry her, thereby saving her from the shame and humiliation inevitable at that time. In desperation, they paid officials to turn a blind eye and married anyway, June using her stage name. It was no good. June's mother Ethel May freaked out, but organised matters. June was sent to her cousin's in New York where she would carry and bear the child. Then she would return and Ethel would rear the child as her own. No one would know. As for Rose, well, the plan was he would never see his lover again. He would occasionally provide money, but mostly just wait to see if the police would bust him for bigamy. And maybe worse, given that June was officially a minor.
So Jack grew up surrounded by women. There was his mother (grandmother) Ethel, who ran a beauty parlour in the basement. There was his sister (mother), June, and his other sister (aunt) Lorraine. And, for a few years at least, there was the man whose name he was given, Ethel's Irish husband John Joseph Nicholson. He was by all accounts a kind man, a window dresser and sign-writer by trade. He'd take young Jack to the cinema, but also to bars, because John Snr drank heavily. Indeed, he'd be dead from it by 1955.
Young Jack was a happy and very good-looking child. He attended Manasquan High School, in New Jersey, but did not take to his studies. He did, though, star in many school plays and, when 17 and on a trip to California to visit his sister (he does have a real sister - well, a half sister - named Pamela Hawley Liddicoat. There's also Don's daughter Donna Rose), he decided to get into the movies. He worked as a messenger boy for the cartoon unit at MGM, and trained as an actor with a group called the Players Ring Theatre. He found jobs onstage and on TV - in shows such as Bronco, Hawaiian Eye and Tales Of Wells Fargo (in the mid-Sixties he'd also appear as Jaime Angel in Dr Kildare). Then came his first breakthrough when, in 1958, director Roger Corman cast him as the lead in his low-budget The Cry-Baby Killer. Corman, best-known for his camp adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe would soon also cast him as a pain-loving dental patient in Little Shop Of Horrors and, alongside Peter Lorre, in The Raven. Being as Corman would often shoot films back-to-back using the same sets, Nicholson hung around after The Raven, and so got to star with Boris Karloff in The Terror.
Now married to actress Sandra Knight (they'd have a daughter, Jennifer - now Jennifer Norfleet - in 1965, then divorce a year later), with Harry Dean Stanton as his best man, Nicholson took to writing, seeing his Thunder Island filmed in 1963. Then came a relationship with director Monte Hellman, with whom Nicholson made four movies in quick succession, writing both Flight To Fury and Ride In The Whirlwind and co-producing the latter, as well as The Shooting. These last two movies were odd pieces, existential Westerns with winding, thoughtful scripts. Having read widely and consumed an awful lot of drugs, Nicholson was profoundly interested in internal consciousness and the counter-culture, and attempted to squeeze his thinking into the hoary old Western format.
Not for long. Next he went all-out into the mind-expansion business, writing Corman's LSD extravaganza The Trip, putting together The Monkees' weird-out Head and starring in such contemporary rebel flicks as Hells Angels On Wheels. Then it all happened for him. In The Trip, a TV director decides to score some acid and explore his mind. Playing the director was Peter Fonda, the dealer being Dennis Hopper. Now these two had their own project, Easy Rider and, with Rip Torn pulling out at the last, they asked Nicholson to step in as the spirit-soaked Southern lawyer. The movie made him a star, got him Oscar-nominated and launched him on an incredible run of success.
Nicholson was Oscar-nominated again as the disaffected musical prodigy in Five Easy Pieces. Once again as the hard-nosed officer showing young Randy Quaid a good time on his way to jail in The Last Detail. And once AGAIN as streetwise private dick JJ Gittes, taken for a ride by Faye Dunaway in Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Perhaps just as importantly, he also won quite a reputation as a womaniser for his salacious role in the controversial Carnal Knowledge. It was a rep he'd more than live up to.
It was while making his next movie, The Fortune, a fairly zany effort with fellow-stud Warren Beatty, that Nicholson heard the truth about his family. Unfortunately, his real mother had died of cancer back in 1963, and his grandmother had passed away in 1970, some four months before Easy Rider sent her beloved child into the stratosphere. The truth hit him hard. He did call his father, reportedly beginning the conversation with a terse "Hello. I understand you're family", but he did not allow the relationship to blossom. Instead, he went his own way - very much his own way.
First there was the long-awaited Oscar. As Randall McMurphy, the free spirit battling the system in a mental institution in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, he was superb, deservedly taking Best Actor. But, ever the rebel, he would not use his status simply to score the big roles. Indeed, over his career, Nicholson has missed out on some peaches: Michael Corleone in The Godfather, the Robert Redford roles in The Sting and The Great Gatsby, Martin Sheen's in Apocalypse Now, Jon Voight's in Coming Home. First he tested himself against Marlon Brando in the offbeat The Missouri Breaks, then he directed his own Goin' South, featuring Mary Steenburgen in her first major role (he'd actually made his directorial debut back in 1970, with Drive, He Said).
Goin' South was good fun but it didn't do well. Nicholson took time off before reappearing in one of his most famous roles -as Jack Torrance in The Shining ("Heeere's JOHNNY!"). Compelling and utterly overblown, he'd use many of the character traits again in as The Joker in Batman and the devil in The Witches Of Eastwick. He courted controversy once more in Warren Beatty's Commie-friendly Reds (for which he was once more Oscar-nominated) and with his rough'n' racy sex scenes with Jessica Lange in a remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice.
He won another Oscar as a flirty ex-astronaut Garrett Breedlove, attempting to seduce Shirley Maclaine in Terms Of Endearment, a role he'd later reprise in The Evening Star. Then was nominated some more as the hitman in Prizzi's Honour, alongside Angelica Huston, and the sympathetic loser in Ironweed. He'd be nominated yet again as the explosive Colonel Nathan R. Jessup in A Few Good Men ("You can't HANDLE the truth!"), and win once more as the crotchety obsessive-compulsive Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets. In the meantime there was money. Nicholson's movies have taken over $1.25 billion at the box-office, but the figure that's most often quoted is the $60 million he received from his share of 1989's Batman. He must have known something big was on the cards when, in his Cuckoo's Nest Oscar acceptance speech, he thanked Mary Pickford "for being the first actor to get a percentage of her pictures".
Of course, there's also the sex. Despite his 17-year relationship with Anjelica Huston, Nicholson was alleged to have had many, many affairs. She finally left him when he began seeing his daughter's best friend, Rebecca Broussard, with whom he had two children - Lorraine and Raymond (he'd had a son, Caleb Goddard, with actress Susan Anspach, back in 1970). Next came another actress, Lara Flynn Boyle, over 30 years his junior, who he dated secretly until they were involved in a car accident and she fled before the ambulance arrived, the story subsequently being released to the public. There was furthermore the rather nasty case of Christine Sheehan, an ex-prostitute who claimed she went to Nicholson's Hollywood home in 1996 and, when she demanded money for her services, had her head banged repeatedly on the floor. She settled out-of-court for $33,000 but later, claiming her injuries had worsened, went after another half a million. Nicholson contested her claims vehemently.
Next came the critically lauded The Pledge, where Nicholson played a retired cop obsessed with a child-murder case. The film reunited him with director Sean Penn, with whom he also made The Crossing Guard in 1994. And it just kept coming. In About Schmidt, he was lauded once more in the title role of Warren Schmidt, a retired 66-year-old whose wife dies, leading him to go visit his daughter, then marrying into a mid-Western family. Though cantankerous and disapproving, Nicholson's Schmidt was quiet and understated, a far cry from Melvin Udall. Part comedy, part road movie, part existential tragedy, the movie, directed by Alexander "Election" Payne, saw one of Jack's best ever performances.
Now in his Sixties, Nicholson seemed to alternate between loud, larger-than-life characters, like his duel role of president and extravagant Vegas entrepreneur in Tim Burton's hilarious Mars Attacks!, and ordinary Joes having trouble with onrushing age, like his dodgy wine merchant, botching his one-last-job in 1996's Blood And Wine. And this continued with his follow up to About Schmidt, Anger Management, which saw Adam Sandler wrongly accused of losing his head and sent to an anger management class run by Jack's wholly furious Dr Buddy Rydell.
Lara Flynn Boyle, with whom he continues to enjoy a stormy relationship, once claimed that dating Nicholson was like being with a King and - talented, experienced, charismatic, fabulously well connected and unbelievably rich - in modern terms that's pretty much what he is.

Yuri Nikulin

Yuri Nikulin (18.12.1921 - 21.08.1997) - Russian clown and actor.

Nikulin was born just after the end of the Russian civil war, in Smolensk in Western Russia. His mother was a garage supervisor and his father a writer of satirical articles - "a profession which may have influenced [Nikulin's] future career". Nikulin served in the Soviet Army during the Great Patriotic War and the Winter War with Finland. He reportedly had a comparably "long period of military service, from 1939 to 1946, preparing to be demobilised just when the German invasion of the Soviet Union began in 1941.
He first took up clowning in 1944 when a political officer in his battalion, impressed by his repertoire of jokes, ordered him to organise entertainment for the division, which he did with resounding success. Encouraged, once the war ended, Nikulin reportedly "tried unsuccessfully to enter drama college before answering a newspaper advertisement recruiting trainees for the Clown Studio at Moscow's Tsvetnoy Boulevard Circus."[1] The several acting schools and theatres rejected Nikulin allegedly due to "lacking artistic talent". However, he did find initial success at the Circus and qualified as a fully-trained clown in 1950, and never abandoned his links with the circus. He met his wife, Tatyana, there, and in 1982 became the director of the Moscow Circus, a post he held until his death. His son, Maxim, is now a circus administrator.
His screen debut came in 1958 with the film The Girl with the Guitar. He appeared in almost a dozen major features, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, "but his ascent to star status was assured by a handful of short films directed by Leonid Gaidai."The first of these, Bootleggers (Russian: Samogonchiki or The Moonshine Makers, 1961} was also the first where Nikulin was featured as a character named Fool in a Marx Brothers-like trio, along with Georgy Vitsyn as Coward and Yevgeny Morgunov as Experienced. In former Soviet republics he is particularly well-known for his role in popular film series about the criminal trio. The series included such films as Operation Y and Other Shurik's Adventures and Kidnapping Caucassian Style.
His most popular films include comedies Brilliantovaia Ruka (Diamond Arm), 12 Stulyev (12 Chairs), Stariki-Razboiniki (Old Hooligans). He was also acclaimed for his roles in Andrey Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev and several films on the World War II themes (Sergei Bondarchuk's They Were Fighting for Homeland, Aleksei German’s Twenty Days Without War).
All his life Yuri Nikulin was fond of funny stories, which he started collecting while serving the army; the hobby later resulted in the TV show The White Parrot Club ("where celebrities would sit around a table telling jokes") and jest-books From Nikulin.
Reportedly, Nikulin's "comic timing never faltered" even in old age and "he had no enemies and mixed with politicians from both the Soviet and post -Soviet eras." He also reportedly was close to Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and supported Boris Yeltsin's re-election campaign."
He was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1973, and of Hero of Socialist Labour in 1990. He had a number of state awards, including two Orders of Lenin.
Reportedly, Nikulin was one of the "best-loved men in Russia" and his death was mourned "not just by Russians but by tens of millions in the wider Russian-speaking world from Ukraine to Kazakhstan as the actor and comic who more than any other expressed the daily woes and laughter of the Soviet Everyman."
As mentioned, Nikulin was succeeded in his office at the Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard by his son. There is a bronze monument to him in front of the circus, which now bears his name. He is buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton (25.12.1642 - 20.03.1727) - English physicist, mathematician and astronomer.

Isaac Newton was born on 25 December 1642 at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, England. His father was a wealthy farmer, who died 3 months before the birth of Isaac. His mother, Hannah Ayscough, married for the second time when Newton was three years old. Afterwards she left Isaac in the care of his grandmother and began to live with her new husband.
When Newton was twelve he was admitted to The King’s School, Grantham. He studied there until seventeen. Newton abhorred farming but his mother wanted him to manage a household.
From 1661 he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Four years later Newton discovered the generalized binomial theorem.
Isaac Newton made a lot of discoveries in mathematics, physics, astronomy and other sciences. One of the most famous books of Newton is Philosophi? Naturalis Principia Mathematica. It was published in 1687. There are a lot of important discoveries in this book including universal gravitation and three laws of motion. The first practical reflecting telescope was also invented by Newton. Between 1670 and 1672 he studied optics. As a result Newton showed that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colours. Isaac Newton is an author of the development of differential and integral calculus and he shares this mathematical discovery with Gottfried Leibniz. As legend has it Newton developed the theory of gravitation when he watched an apple that fell from a tree. Isaac Newton also attempted to predict the end of the world and he supposed that the world would end no earlier than 2060.
It should be noted that Isaac Newton was religious and studied theology. According to different sources he was Antitrinitarian. Newton studied the Bible and published some of his theological researches.
Newton also devoted his time to alchemy but he didn’t publish any alchemical works. It is known that mercury was found in his hair after his death. According to the suppositions this was a result of his alchemical experiments.
It is also known that between 1689 and 1690 and in 1701 Isaac Newton was a member of the Parliament of England. Isaac Newton never married and died intestate.
He spent last years of his life in the residence at Cranbury Park, near Winchester. He died in London in 1727. Isaac Newton was interred in Westminster Abbey. Many scientists consider Newton to be the greatest genius in the history of mankind.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama (04.08.1961) - American President.

Barack Obama Jr. is the 44th President of the USA. He used to be a Senator of Illinois state. He was born in Honolulu, on the 4th of August, 1961. His comes from a multicultural background. His mother was a white-born woman from Kansas, while his father was a Kenyan student. When Barack was only two, his parents divorced. Barack Obama Sr. left for Kenya, remarried there and made his way to the Kenyan government. He visited his son only once in Hawaii in 1971. His mother, Stanley Ann Durham, married an Indonesian student and moved to Jakarta with a six-year-old son. The boy attended one of the local state schools there.
As the time passed, he returned to Honolulu and stayed with his grandparents. In 1979 he graduated from a prestigious private school Punahou. This school is proud of its famous alumni, which includes actors, athletes, politicians, etc. After the high school he studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles, but he soon transferred to Columbia University. Barack studied political science and international relations there. In 1983, having a Bachelor’s degree, he started working for one large international company as an editor in a financial department. Two years later, he settled in Chicago, where he worked for a charity organization. He was a social worker, who provided help to the residents of impoverished areas.
As he later declared this experience was the best education in his life, even better than Harvard, which he entered in 1988. Working for the charity, he understood that certain things in law and policy should be changed in order to improve people’s lives. In 1993 he graduated from Harvard Law School and started working for one law firm which specialized in civil rights legislation. Apart from that, he’s been teaching the course of constitutional law for the University of Chicago. Soon, he wrote and published his first book “Dreams from My Father”, which brought him fame and acknowledgement.
While teaching at university, he met his future wife - Michelle Robinson. In 1996 Barack won the election to the Senate of Illinois and that’s when his political career began to flourish. By 2004 he’s been already a member of the U. S. Senate. Four years later he ran for President, and despite having little political experience, he won. In January of 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of the USA. The same year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to strengthen international diplomacy. He was reelected to a second term presidency in November of 2012, defeating the Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Obama’s two hobbies are basketball and poker. Since 1992 he is married and has two daughters.

Jane Austen

Jane Austen (16.12.1775 - 18.07.1817) - English writer

Jane Austen was a well-known British novelist and the author of several masterpieces. She was also known as “the first lady” of English literature and the founder of the so-called novel of manners. She was born in a small town of Hampshire county on December 16, 1775. In fact, J. Austen’s works are on the curriculum of most British colleges and universities.
The future novelist was born in the parish priest’s family. She had six brothers and two sisters. Her oldest brother also became a priest like their father, even though he was fond of literature like Jane. Two of her brothers were promoted to navy admirals and one was a bank manager. Her sister Cassandra was her soul-mate and she shared all the secrets with her.
The first 25 years of her life she spent in native Steventon. Namely in that place she wrote the famous novels “Pride and Prejudice”, “Sense and Sensibility” and some others. However these works for a long time remained only drafts and haven’t been published. In 1801 Jane’s father retired and their family moved to another town.
Having moved to several towns, finally they settled in a small house near Alton and this place was her home for the rest of her life. There she worked in literary field and created her masterpieces. Interestingly enough “Northanger Abbey” was published only after her death. At first it was sold for ten pounds to the publisher and then bought back by Jane’s family members.
Along with this novel in 1818 the book “Persuasion” was released. The real name of the author never appeared on Jane’s books, although all her relatives and close friends knew who wrote them. Thus, her works received almost no recognition during her life. Most novels, written by J. Austen, were comedies of manners, in which the author openly ridiculed stupidity.
Her early books contained light portrait descriptions, whereas her later novels presented more ironic and contemptuous demonstrations. Speaking of her education, in 1783 Jane and her sister studied in Oxford. They also studied for some time in Southampton and Reading. She grew up on Shakespeare, Thompson, Sterne, Fielding’s books. Her first work, which was a parody of a boring ode, was written when she was only 14.
When her father died, she had to help somehow her mother to support the family. That’s when she started publishing her works under the modest pseudonym “A Lady”. In 1816 she was honored to receive the review on her novel “Emma” from Sir Walter Scott. Austen died in 1817 in Winchester. It was known that she suffered from Addison’s disease.

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov (26.09.1849 - 27.02.1936) - Russian scientist.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a prominent Russian scientist. He was the first Russian Nobel Prize winner. This man was the founder of the largest Russian physiological school. Pavlov was born in 1849 in Ryazan. His ancestors were mainly priests and belonged to Russian Orthodox society. That’s why he spent several years studying theology, which he later recalled with great warmth.
While in the last year of studying he read a very useful book on brain reflexes written by Professor Sechenov. Basically, this book has completely changed all his life. In 1870 he moved to Saint-Petersburg to continue his education. At that time he was rather busy with “nervous regulation” studies. More than ten years he spent studying gastrointestinal tract.
To learn human build-up he led hundreds of researches. Making a series of discoveries during his career he fully re-created modern notion of digestion. When he was in his fifties, Pavlov made a sufficient report on digestive system at the conference held in Spain. Following this report, he received the Nobel Prize.
While studying medicine, at the same time he worked at the K. N. Ustimovich’s lab. After graduation he was approved at the well-known Botkin hospital as one of the department’s head. He didn’t think much of material well-being at those times.
Speaking of his personal life, in 1881 Ivan Petrovich met his future wife in Saint-Petersburg. Her name was Serafima Vasilyevna and she was from Rostov-on-Don. His parents were against this marriage and refused to help the newly-wed couple in any way. For that reason Ivan and Serafima lived in a rather poor environment for the next ten years. They spent some time living with her parents and his brother, who worked as Mendeleev’s assistant.
At the house in Rostov, where he lived while visiting this city, there is a special memorial in honor of the scientist. Starting from 1925 till the end of his life he directed the Academy of Sciences. He died at the rather advanced age and was buried in Saint-Petersburg.

Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak (29.01.1890 - 30.05.1960) - Russian poet and novelist.

Pasternak was born in Moscow on February 10, (Gregorian), 1890 (Julian January 29). His parents were a prominent Jewish painter Leonid Pasternak, professor at the Moscow School of Painting and Rosa (Raitza) Kaufman, a concert pianist. Pasternak was brought up in a cosmopolitan atmosphere, his home being visited by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Leo Tolstoy.
Inspired by his neighbour Alexander Scriabin, Pasternak resolved to become a composer and entered the Moscow Conservatory. In 1910, he abruptly left the conservatory for the University of Marburg, where he studied under Neo-Kantian philosophers Hermann Cohen and Nicolai Hartmann. Although invited to become a scholar, he decided against philosophy as a profession and returned to Moscow in 1914. His first collection of poetry, influenced by Alexander Blok and the Russian Futurists, was published later that year.
Pasternak's early verse cleverly dissimulates his preoccupation with Kant's ideas. Its fabric includes striking alliterations, wild rhythmic combinations, day-to-day vocabulary, and hidden allusions to his favourite poets - Rilke, Lermontov and the German Romantics.
During World War I he taught and worked at a chemical factory in the Urals; this undoubtedly provided him with material for Dr. Zhivago many years later. Unlike his relatives and many of his friends, Pasternak didn't leave Russia after the revolution. He was fascinated with the new ideas and possibilities the revolution had brought to life.
Pasternak spent the summer of 1917 living in the steppe country near Saratov, where he fell in love with a Jewish girl. This passion resulted in the collection My Sister Life, which he wrote for three months and was embarrassed to publish for four years, so novel was its style. When it finally appeared in 1921, the book had a revolutionary impact upon Russian poetry. It made Pasternak the model of imitation for younger poets, and decisively changed the poetic manners of Osip Mandelshtam and Marina Tsvetayeva, to name only a few.
Following My Sister Life, Pasternak produced some hermetic pieces of uneven quality, including his masterpiece, a lyric cycle entitled Rupture (1921). Various authors such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Andrey Bely, and Vladimir Nabokov applauded Pasternak's poems as works of pure, unbridled inspiration. In the later 1920s he also participated in the celebrated tripartite correspondence with Rilke and Tsvetayeva.
By the end of the 1920s, Pasternak increasingly felt that his colourful modernist style was at odds with the doctrine of Socialist Realism approved by the Communist party. He attempted to make his poetry more comprehensible to the masses by reworking his earlier pieces and starting two lengthy poems on the Russian Revolution. He also turned to prose and wrote several autobiographic stories, notably "The Childhood of Luvers" and "Safe Conduct."
By 1932, Pasternak had strikingly reshaped his style to make it acceptable to the Soviet public and printed the new collection of poems aptly entitled The Second Birth. Although its Caucasian pieces were as brilliant as the earlier efforts, the book alienated the core of Pasternak's refined audience abroad. He simplified his style even further for his next collection of patriotic verse, Early Trains (1943), which prompted Nabokov to describe Pasternak as a "weeping Bolshevik" and "Emily Dickinson in trousers."
During the great purges of the later 1930s, Pasternak became progressively disillusioned with the Communist ideals. Reluctant to publish his own poetry, he turned to translating Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear), Goethe (Faust), Rilke (Requiem fur eine Freundin), Paul Verlaine, and Georgian poets. Pasternak's translations of Shakespeare have proved popular with the Russian public because of their colloquial, modernised dialogues, but critics accused him of "pasternakizing" the English playwright. Although he was widely panned for excessive subjectivism, Stalin is said to have crossed Pasternak's name off an arrest list during the purges, saying "Don't touch this cloud dweller."
Pasternak died of lung cancer on May 30, 1960. Despite only a small notice appearing in the Literary Gazette, many thousands of people travelled from Moscow to his funeral in Peredelkino.

Al Pacino

Al Pacino (born 25.04.1940) - American actor.

It's those coal-black eyes, glistening with absolute conviction and (probably) malicious intent. Glaring out from millions of film-posters on millions of bedroom walls, they have at some point given us all the shivers. Because, cinematically speaking, we all know what those eyes have seen, we all know what terrors their owner has perpetrated. With just two of his many roles, Al Pacino has lodged himself in solidly our imaginations. As Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, we watched him evolve from a hopeful student innocent into an all-powerful, all-controlling tyrant. And in Scarface, we saw him grow from a sassy street-kid into a paranoid, murderous despot ("Say hello to my leedle friend!"). These characters were the ultimate anti-social anti-heroes, genuine threats to our way of life - genuine because Pacino, the consummate professional, made them so very real. Add to these roles his other classic performances, in Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and The Insider, and you realise why the man is an undeniable and deserved screen icon.
Getting there wasn't easy. Alfredo James Pacino was born to a family of Italian immigrants in East Harlem, New York, on the 25th of April, 1940, his grandparents having crossed the Atlantic from Sicily. His father, Salvatore, was an insurance agent who split from Alfredo's mother Rose when the boy was just two - mother and child moving in with her parents in a dirt-poor area near the Bronx zoo. As an only child, he was zealously protected by his grandparents, hardly leaving the house till the age of seven. When he was older, his mother would take him to the cinema (he was terribly hurt when she died young in 1962) and he'd act out the plotlines to his grandma on his return. Shy and insular, he'd impress his school-mates with a fictional past he'd invented for himself, claiming for instance that he'd been raised in Texas.
Thankfully, his teachers spotted his talent, cast him in school plays and asked him to read from the Bible at assembly. He enjoyed this but did not consider acting as a profession till, at age 14, he saw Chekov's The Seagull performed at the Elsmere Theatre in the South Bronx. This led to him enrolling at the prestigious High School of the Performing Arts but, flunking everything but English, he eventually, at 17, dropped out.
Yet Pacino, like many of the characters he'd later play, was remorseless in his ambition. He worked his ass off to finance his further studies, toiling as a messenger-boy, a movie-usher, an apartment superintendant and as a mail-deliverer at Commentary magazine. He attended acting classes and gained experience in basement plays before joining the Herbert Berghof Studio, under the tutelage of the legendary Charles Laughton. No elitist wimp - in January 1961 he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon - he threw himself into the theatrical underground. Off-Broadway, he wrote, directed and acted, kept moving, and finally and crucially, in 1966, he came to the Actor's Studio to study the Method under Lee Strasberg (later to play Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part 2).
Pacino's stage career was a tough grind. In 1962, he'd done Jack And The Beanstalk at the Children's Theatre, then honed his craft in many a production, including The Creditors, Hello Out There and The Peace Creeps, playing in the latter alongside James Earl Jones. He spent a season at the Charles Playhouse in Boston, performing in Awake And Sing and America, Hurrah, then returned to New York for The Indian Wants the Bronx, a role that won him an Obie award as Best Actor of the 1967-68 season - as expected of Strasberg's star pupil.
Now, at last, he was on Broadway. 1969 was the breakthrough year, seeing him pick up a Tony award for his role as a psychotic junkie in Does The Tiger Wear A Necktie? Indeed, it was his ability to convincingly portray addiction - he'd spent much time researching in methadone centres - that brought him into movies. First came Me, Natalie, then the mortally depressing Panic In Needle Park where he was drug-driven to destruction along with Kitty Winn (soon to be seen as Ellen Burstyn's PA in The Exorcist). And then it really took off. With his very Italian combination of menacing contemplation and terrifyingly focused rage (well, HOLLYWOOD Italian, anyway), he was chosen above Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson to play Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Thoughtful, dignified, self-righteous and utterly ruthless, he was superb as Marlon Brando's initially reluctant heir, charged with the task of legitimising an ugly business.
Pacino found himself rightly Oscar-nominated for his efforts ands, aside from 1973's The Scarecrow, wherein he crosses the existential emptiness of America along with Gene Hackman, he would be nominated for his next three roles too. First, he was the incorruptible cop in Sidney Lumet's gritty Serpico: then Corleone once more, even whacking his own brother in Godfather Part 2 (poor, silly Fredo!): and finally there was 1975's Dog Day Afternoon, again with Lumet, where he played a bi-sexual, horribly botching a bank robbery he'd hoped would pay for his lover's sex-change operation.
Following this incredible spate of success, Pacino returned to his first love - the stage. He would only make eight movies in the next 15 years. In 1977, he won his second Tony for The Basic Training Of Pavlo Hummel, then played Mark Anthony, Hamlet and Othello, before taking on the part of Walter Cole in David Mamet's American Buffalo, which he would perform on and off between 1980 and 1984. Over the years he would return to Shakespeare many times, challenging himself to perfect his Richard III, as well as delving into Brecht and the powerful role of King Herod in Oscar Wilde's Salome.
When he did venture back into the movies, he usually chose only the most intense and controversial parts. He was Oscar-nominated again in 1979, as the battling attorney in Norman Jewison's And Justice For All, then played an undercover cop in a relentlessly sleazy gay underground in William Friedkin's Cruising. In 1983, he was a blistering Tony Montana in Brian De Palma's lurid drug-drama, Scarface. Then came his one generally accepted failure (with the possible exception of Godfather 3), 1985's Revolution. As an early-American epic, directed by Hugh Hudson (then on a role after Chariots Of Fire and Greystoke), it should have worked. But it was too long and too slow, and critics were merciless in their mockery of Pacino's inappropriate New York accent. Badly stung, he would not return to the Silver Screen for four years, concentrating instead on his stage-work and also acting in and producing a pet project - a short independent movie of Heathcote Williams' The Local Stigmatic. Indeed, this tiny movie would become something of an obsession. In it, Pacino plays a crazed English gangster bent on absolute power - the play being concerned both with the nature of wickedness and the ways in which all of us are actors. For years, he would show it to small groups of friends and colleagues, tirelessly fascinated by their reaction.
When Pacino went back to the movies, it was with a bang. First, there was 1989's Sea Of Love, a superior thriller with Ellen Barkin, then he was a hilariously evil Big Boy Caprice in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy. Next came Frankie And Johnny, a hugely popular romance, despite the critics' disbelief at Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer slaving in a greasy spoon. Then, finally, came the Oscar, for his performance as the romantic, predatory, abrasive and blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Scent Of A Woman, a remake of a 1975 Italian movie. He would be nominated for the eighth time the very next year, as a pushy real-estate salesman in Mamet's excellent Glengarry Glen Ross.
More excellence followed. Pacino was tremendous as the street-wise players in De Palma's Carlito's Way (alongside a fantastically coke-addled Sean Penn) and Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco ("Fugg-ED about it!"). But it also seemed that his close-to-overblown portrayal of Frank Slade had left its mark. In Michael Mann's Heat, he almost became a parody of himself as the explosive cop hunting down the ultra-cool Robert De Niro, and he carried the same over-expansive qualities into The Devil's Advocate (though, to be fair, he WAS the Devil - we're not SUPPOSED to like him).
In the meantime, Pacino had taken up directing with Looking For Richard. This was another project close to his heart, a documentary following the staging of a performance of Richard III. In it, he espouses the beauty and power of theatre, in particular attacking the notion that it's solely a middle-class pursuit. As a dyed-in-the-wool Harlem boy who's gained a lifetime of thrills from performance, he intended to take his message back to the people. From 1996 to 1999, he was once more to be found treading the boards, performing several runs of Eugene O'Neil's Hughie.
Having, in 1997, been honoured with a star on Hollywood's Walk Of Fame (in 1994 he'd received a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and later took the Cecil B. De Mille award at the 2001 Golden Globes), Pacino justified the award with an intense but gratifyingly subdued portrayal of Sixty Minutes journalist Lowell Bergman, alongside Russell Crowe in Mann's The Insider. Then came Oliver Stone and Any Given Sunday, where Pacino somehow kept his cool as the desperate American Football coach, harassed by owner Cameron Diaz. Chinese Coffee saw him once more in the director's chair.
The list of movies Pacino has turned down is nearly as impressive as his filmography. There was Kramer Vs Kramer, Born On The 4th Of July, Apocalypse Now, Pretty Woman, Crimson Tide, even the part of Han Solo in Star Wars. But, in general, his choices have been good. Offscreen, he's had a harder time. He was once quoted as saying "The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers", and this does seem to have been the way for much of his life. He has a daughter, Julie Marie, from a relationship with acting coach Jan Tarrant but has remained true to bachelorhood. He had a long affair with actress Diane Keaton, a shorter one with Australian actress Linda Hobbs, and a brief fling with Penelope Ann Miller (his co-star in Carlito's Way and many years his junior). Now though, he seems settled with long-time girlfriend Beverly D'Angelo, another actress (she appeared in National Lampoon's Vacation movies, as well as Every Which Way But Loose, and as Patsy Cline in The Coal Miner's Daughter). The couple recently had twins - Anton and Olivia.
Given Pacino's leanings and his introduction to theatre back in the South Bronx, it would be very surprising if their son was not so-named after Chekov. With theatre in his blood, Pacino - without doubt one of the greatest actors of his generation - now has it in his blood-line. Perhaps a new dynasty is beginning. Better show some respect, eh?

Pele

Pele (born 23.10.1940) - Brazilian football (soccer) player.

Pele Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Honorary KBE, nicknamed Pele, is a former Brazilian football (soccer) player who won three World Cup medals and broke many records, also known as O Rei (The King) and Perola Negra (The Black Pearl).
Often considered the complete midfield and attacking player, he was completely two-footed, a prolific clinical finisher, exceptional at dribbling and passing, and was a remarkably good tackler for a forward. He was famed for his speed and kicking strength and scored 1,281 goals over the course of his career. Since his full retirement in 1977 he has served as an ambassador for the sport.
He was born in Tres Coracoes, Minas Gerais, Brazil, the son of Fluminense Football Club footballer Joao Ramos do Nascimento, also known as Dondinho. He was named after American inventor Thomas Edison, and did not receive the nickname "Pele" until his school days. He originally disliked the nickname, but the more he complained the more he was called by it. Later in life, when reflecting that the world came to know the name, he stated his belief that it was chosen for him by God.
Growing up in poverty on the streets of Bauru, Sao Paulo, he could not afford a football and usually played with either a sock stuffed with papers or a grapefruit. He was given his first leather ball on his sixth birthday by his father's teammate, Sosa. At the age of eleven, Pele was scouted by Brazilian legend Waldemar de Brito and was invited to join de Brito's amateur team, Clube Atletico Bauru. In 1956, Pele's mentor took him to the city of Sao Paulo, to try out for professional club Santos Futebol Clube. De Brito told the directors at Santos that the 15-year-old would be "the greatest football player in the world." Pele was offered professional terms and scored four goals in his first league game. When the new season started, Pele was given a starting place in the first team and, at the age of just sixteen, became the top scorer in the league. Just ten months after signing professionally, the teenager was called up to the Brazilian national team.
In the Football World Cup 1958, Pele became the youngest ever World Cup winner in Sweden at 17, scoring two goals in the final as Brazil beat Sweden 5–2 in Stockholm. He played in three more Brazilian World Cup teams in 1962, 1966 and 1970, two of which Brazil won (1962 and 1970). Although his contributions were limited in the 1962 and 1966 campaigns because of injuries inflicted by opposition players, the 1970 tournament in Mexico was to be Pele's last. The 1970 team, featuring famous players like Rivelino, Jairzinho, Gerson, and Tostao, is often considered to be the greatest national team ever. Brazil defeated Italy 4–1 in the final, with Pele scoring one and setting up Carlos Alberto for another.
Pele's technique and deft touch combined with his dribbling skills and scoring ability cannot be overstated. His most spectacular signature move was probably the "bicycle kick". He scored over twelve hundred career goals in all competitions, the biggest haul by far among famous players. After his retirement from Brazilian football on 2 October, 1974, he joined the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League. A reported $7,000,000 contract for three years made him the highest paid football player of the North American Soccer League.
During the three seasons playing for the Cosmos he was named in the annual NASL First Team: the 11 best players of a particular season. He was also named as the league's most valuable player in 1976. His lucrative contract for Cosmos meant that Pele had to play in the regular US-based NASL season but also travel the World playing many exhibition games. During the 3 years Pele played for Cosmos, he played matches in countries such as: China, Japan, Sweden, Bermuda and Uganda. In his final year as a professional player, the NY Cosmos won the 1977 NASL Championship. During that season Pele was joined by fellow Brazilian Carlos Alberto and "the Kaiser", Franz Beckenbauer.
He played his last game as a professional in a friendly on October 1, 1977, in front of a capacity crowd at Giants Stadium against his old club, Santos; he played the first half with the Cosmos and the second half with Santos. The exhibition game was sold out six weeks beforehand. Pele did appear in a few friendly games for the Cosmos after he retired in 1977. Due to falling attendances the Cosmos did try to bring Pele out of retirement a second time, but he declined.
He was received in the Vatican by three popes, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II.
In 1995, President Cardoso appointed Pele to the position of Minister of Sports. He left after he was alledgely involved in a bribery scandal.
Pele is a long-standing contributor for children's rights at UNICEF and acts as the figurehead of a charity for erectile dysfunction. Pele is certainly one of the most famous men in football, with his nickname being recognized even by those unfamiliar with the sport.
In 2005, Pele drew international media attention due to the imprisonment of Edson Cholbi Nascimento, his son and ex-goalkeeper of Santos Futebol Clube, who was arrested in an operation to dismantle a drug gang in southeastern Brazil.
Nascimento, the younger (then 35) was arrested along with some 50 other people after an eight-month investigation into a cocaine trafficking operation in the port city of Santos.
Recently Pele scouted for Premiership Football Team Fulham FC.

Peter I

Peter I (30.05.1672 - 08.02.1725) - Russian Tsar.

Peter I was born on 30 May 1672. When Peter was a child several teachers were delegated to teach him. Among Peter’s tutors were Patrick Gordon, Nikita Zotov and Paul Menesius. This process was commissioned by Tsar Alexis I.
In 1676 Tsar Alexis I died. As a result the power was left to Feodor III who was Peter’s elder half-brother. He died in 1682 and there were not his descendants. Consequently there was a conflict for power between the Miloslavsky and Naryshkin families. Other half-brother of Peter, Ivan V, was heir to the throne but his health declined. As a result at the age of ten Peter became Tsar chosen by the Boyar Duma.
Peter was interested in shipping and shipbuilding. He was a tall man and his height was about 200 cm. He did not have square shoulders and his feet and hands were small. Moreover Peter’s head was small for his figure. In accordance with his mother’s desire Peter married. The marriage was in 1689 and Eudoxia Lopukhina became his wife. 10 years later the marriage broke down and Peter’s wife became a nun.
In 1689 the power was in the hands of Peter’s half-sister Sophia. Because of two ineffective Crimean campaigns her authority was undermined and Peter planned to take power. Peter could become an independent ruler only in 1694 when his mother died. Officially there were two rulers: Peter and Ivan V. In 1696 Peter became the absolute ruler when Ivan V died.
On 19 August 1700 Peter declared war on Sweden. The main aim of the war was to acquire control of the Baltic Sea. At that time it was under Swedish Empire control. Denmark-Norway, Saxony and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth supported Peter. In 1721 the Treaty of Nystad ended and the Russian Empire acquired control of the Baltic Sea. This war went down in history as Great Northern War.
In October 1721 Peter was proclaimed Emperor of All Russia. Augustus II of Poland, Frederick William I of Prussia, and Frederick I of Sweden recognized this title. Other monarchs did not agree with it. Some rulers were afraid that Peter would claim authority over them.
Peter imposed new taxes in the Russian Empire. The household tax and the land tax were abrogated. These two taxes were superseded with a poll tax. He also reformed the Russian Orthodox Church.
In 1724 Peter married for a second time to Catherine who was crowned as Empress. However he remained actual ruler of Russia. Peter had 2 wives and 14 children by them. Only 3 of his children survived to adulthood.
In 1723 Peter’s health declined. He had problems with bladder and urinary tract but he was cured. As legend has it in November 1724 while at Lakhta Peter was forced to rescue the soldiers drowning not far from shore.
Consequently his health became worse and these problems caused his death. Peter died on 8 February 1725.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (25.10.1881 - 08.04.1973) - Spanish painter.

Pablo Picasso was an outstanding artist, sculptor, poet and simply one of the greatest figures of the 20th century. Moreover, he was the co-founder of Cubism. Picasso was born on October 25th, 1881, in Malaga, Spain. As a child he was given his father’s surname Blasco, but when he was fourteen he chose to have his mother’s surname - Picasso. His father was an art teacher, while his mother was a housewife. Some biographers believe that Picasso started drawing before he even knew how to speak. When he was ten, they had to move to the north, because his father was offered a job in the School of Art in La Coruna.
In 1985, Picasso enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. He was only fourteen at that time. That’s why the teachers didn’t want to accept him. However, when they saw his incredible talent, they agreed. Two years later he moved to Madrid to study at the Royal School of Fine Arts. His career as an artist began in Barcelona. He met lots of other talented people there and began to attend the “Els Quatre Gats”. It was a place where famous artists, musicians, poets of that time spent their free time.  His first exhibition took place in 1900. The same year he went to Paris, where he visited the impressionist exhibitions.
After this trip he felt the burst of extraordinary creativity and began drawing a series of pictures in blue tones. In 1904, he moved to Paris and settled in Bateau Lavoir. There he met many famous and talented people, including Fernande Olivier, Gertrude Stein, Henri Matisse. Gradually, the depressive motifs in his paintings were replaced by cheerful images of circus and theater. He began to favor gold and pink tones in his pictures. These two periods of his life are known as the Blue and Rose Periods. After experiments with colors the painter turned to the analysis of figures and shapes. This is when he develops cubism in his works.
Picasso’s personal life greatly influenced his works. After the unsuccessful marriage with Russian ballet dancer he began drawing a gloomy surreal world filled with monsters and shapeless creatures. In 1927 he met Marie-Therese Walter and his art dramatically changed. Her natural beauty inspired him to create a series of sculptures in the nude. With Marie-Therese they had a daughter Maya. Picasso had several other mistresses during his life, but his legal wife was Olga Khokhlova. One of his best works was dedicated to the civil war. It was a huge painting “Guernica” (1937), which was full of horror and sadness. One of the most influential artists of all times died 1973 at the age of 91.

Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt (born 18.12.1963) - American actor.

A critic once wrote that Brad Pitt combined "the matinee idol looks of Gary Cooper with the sex symbol loveliness of Marilyn Monroe". It's a line that sums up Pitt's pin-up appeal, but would certainly annoy the pants off Pitt himself. After all, he's spent years trying to explode a reputation as a Himbo, taking on a series of lead roles and cameos that should really have proven to the world that he is in fact a very fine actor indeed. He's played a dazed and confused pot-head, a near-incomprehensible streetfighting traveller, an IRA terrorist, a reluctant vampire, a Nazi mountain-climber, a psycho on the run, a mental patient dedicated to the destruction of world order, AND he dared to act wholly unaided, later to be surrounded by cartoons. Dustin Hoffman was certainly correct when he said "Next to that kid, we all look like onions", but surely, SURELY he has earned our respect by now.
He was born William Bradley Pitt on the 18th of December, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and remains a mid-Westerner to the core. He was raised, alongside brother Doug and sister Julie, in Springfield, Missouri. His father, Bill, managed a trucking firm, working six days a week for 36 years - something of which Brad is very proud. His mother, Jane, was a High School counselor, but his mind-set was influenced more by his dad. "Where I grew up," he once said "you deal. You get through it, power through it, straight up the middle. And you don't complain". It's an attitude that's served him well as he's battled the improbable pressures of stardom.
Due to Bill's success, the Pitts never really wanted for anything, and Brad in particular used this as a springboard to try everything. A decent fellow, he was brought up as a Baptist, singing in the church choir. He loved movies, later recalling a fine day spent at an Ape-athon, watching all five Planet Of The Apes films, back-to-back. At Kickapoo High School he was involved in everything. He was a member of the golf, tennis and swimming teams, as well as the Key and Forensics clubs. He was into debating, school government and school musicals.
Graduating in 1982, he attended the University of Missouri, majoring in journalism, but also concentrating on advertising. Indeed, his ambition was to be an art director. He joined a fraternity, Sigma Chi, but always remained very close to his family. Fellow students recall him writing letters to his mother and grandma while in class.
His choice of career was something of a surprise to those around him. He'd acted in several fraternity shows, but never really revealed a desire to act professionally. Music seemed to be more his thing. But then suddenly, with no real experience behind him, he simply went for it. With two credits still needed before he graduated, in 1986 he climbed into his Datsun (known as Runaround Sue) and, with just $325 in his pocket, took off for California. "In my head," he later said "I was done with college. I was on to the next thing".
The father of a girl he knew had an apartment in California, occupied only by a housekeeper, and here he stayed for a month, rent free. Having made a few friends, he then moved into a flat in North Hollywood, along with eight other guys. They had no furniture, just a TV, a toaster oven and a stereo system. They all slept on the floor in the front room. It was basically Bloke Heaven. For money, they'd go down to the Job Factory, picking up odd jobs here and there. At one point, he had a bet with a buddy as to who could score the most humiliating job. Brad won hands down, dressing up as a giant chicken for El Pollo Loco and hanging out on the corner of Sunset Boulevard in 100 degree heat. Aside from this, he spent time selling cigarettes, delivering fridges, and, bizarrely, assisting a soap opera writer. He even worked driving strippers around in a limousine.
Pitt took the acting lark deadly seriously. He studied under coach Roy London, and would continue to do so for six years, from the off impressing his fellow students with his emotional freedom. And work came quickly. He appeared in the sit-com Head Of The Class, for a while dating the show's star Robin Givens, much to the disgruntlement of her ex-hubbie Mike Tyson. There was also an episode of Growing Pains. But there were better jobs than this. He appeared as Chris in the long-running soap Another World, which has variously featured Anne Heche, Ray Liotta, Kelsey Grammer and, coincidentally, the co-star of one of Brad's later hits, Morgan Freeman. After this, while auditioning for the show Our House, he was asked to read for another part, and found himself playing Shalane McCall's boyfriend Charles in Dallas. He dated her for real too, though she was a mere 16.
There were a few movie roles too. He had uncredited parts in both Less Than Zero and Charlie Sheen's No Man's Land. Then came Cutting Class, about a maniac stalking cheerleaders. He began dating co-star Jill Schoelen, who earlier been seeing Keanu Reeves. Then came the first starring role, in Dark Side Of The Sun, where he played a young American taken by his family to the Adriatic to find a remedy for his terrible skin condition. The movie was shot in Yugoslavia, with Brad being paid $1,523 a week for seven weeks. It was looking good. Then, with editing nearly complete, civil war broke out and much of the film was lost in the ensuing chaos. It would be rediscovered years later, and the film released, but Brad's first shot at success was gone. Not only that, but Schoelen dumped him. Ah, well.
There was a bit of cop trouble around this time too. According to Inside Edition, a sheriff's report said Brad, while filming in LA, had strolled up to Malibu Canyon Highway and dropped his white shorts for A WHOLE MINUTE. Apparently, he was charged with indecent exposure, but had the charge reduced to disturbing the peace, with a $450 fine.
It got better, fast. Brad won a part in the TV movie Too Young To Die?, about an abused teenager given the death penalty for murder. As white trash drug-hound pimp Billy Canton, Brad was thoroughly unpleasant, taking beastly advantage of runaway Juliette Lewis, who he began dating in real life. "It was quite romantic," he later observed dryly "shooting her full of drugs and stuff". The pair would be together for three years, during which period Brad's career took off big-time.
It was thought, when he appeared in Glory Days, about a group of High School friends pulled in different directions by their careers, that he'd become the new Johnny Depp. Sadly, the show was pulled after six episodes, so he had to find another way. He did this immediately, with a 15-minute mega-performance, showing off his fine physique, giving Geena Davis her first orgasm and then robbing her blind in Ridley Scott's Thelma And Louise. Brad had in fact been third choice for the role (George Clooney didn't even get that far). The first choice, William Baldwin, chose to do Backdraft instead.
Straight away, he fought against the possibility of being typecast as a mere beefcake. He was very, very groovy as a wannabe rock star, alongside Catherine Keener and Nick Cave, in Tom DiCillo's Johnny Suede. Then he took a big risk by competing with animations in Cool World - a movie that had millions of men questioning their sexuality when they found they fancied the cartoon version of Kim Basinger. He won both roles against the wishes of money-men who wanted bigger name actors to star.
The run of success continued with Robert Redford's dreamy, moving A River Runs Through It, for which Brad learned to fly-fish by casting off of Hollywood buildings. Many times, he's said, he caught his hook on the back of his own head. Once they had to pull it out with pliers. After the movie, Brad moved into an apartment with his co-star, Buck Simmonds.
Now Brad really began to prove himself. In True Romance, he was hilarious as Floyd, the bemused dope-head caught in the middle of dealers and mobsters. Then, in Kalifornia, he was tremendous as Early Grayce, crossing the States with girlfriend Juliette Lewis and scaring the bejesus out of everyone in his path. The movie was far superior to Oliver Stone's similar and far-more-lauded Natural Born Killers.
Now the roles got bigger. He played Lestat's foil Louis, hating himself for drinking blood in Interview With The Vampire. Then he sent millions of women wild as Tristan Ludlow, falling in love with his brother's girl, becoming an animal in the trenches of WW1 then finding inner truth back home in Legends Of The Fall. It was said he dated the girl for real too - Julia Ormond. He certainly broke up with Juliette Lewis and this was probably for the best, as Lewis had long complained of the pressure she felt dating such a beautiful man.
Next came a major hit, with David Fincher's bleak but wonderful Seven. Backed by Morgan Freeman's stern and studious Detective Somerset, Pitt was great as new-boy Detective David Mills, sent mad by the taunts of Kevin Spacey. Oh, and by the fact that Spacey has beheaded his pregnant wife. Always guaranteed to annoy, that. Seven also saw Brad begin a romance with co-star Gwyneth Paltrow that made them the most sought-after couple on the planet. When later accepting a Golden Globe for his role in 12 Monkeys, he'd call her "my angel, the love of my life", and he'd propose to her while in Argentina filming Seven Years In Tibet. Paltrow in turn would claim she'd give up acting to raise Brad's children. Sadly, they'd split in 1997, a few months into the engagement, a heartbroken Paltrow saying "I think you have to keep yourself intact in order to have a healthy relationship, and I didn't". Luckily for Brad, the break-up meant he wouldn't star with her in the horrible Duets. But he did have to suffer the indignity of having nude pictures of himself and Gwyneth, taken ages previously while they holidayed on St Barthelemy in the French West Indies, being published in Playgirl. He fought to have all copies withdrawn from the shops, but the damage was done.
After Seven came Terry Gilliam's bizarro sci-fi thriller 12 Monkeys, for which Brad turned down Apollo 13. In it, he went for broke as a freaked-out denizen of an asylum who's actually the head of an extremely dangerous gang which destroys civilisation with a very nasty virus. For his pains he took that Golden Globe (he was also Oscar nominated). After Sleepers, there was The Devil's Own, where he mastered a Belfast accent to play a terrorist staying in Harrison Ford's house. Pitt has said the filming was a nightmare as the original script was binned but the studio head demanded they make a film anyway. Walking out would, he was told, cost him $63 million, so he tried to make the best of it. As you would.
Now he was one the biggest stars in Hollywood, getting paid over $17 million for playing Death in Meet Joe Black. Then he rejoined Fincher for Fight Club, playing Edward Norton's cool and sexy alter-ego Tyler Durden and, as he has done in so many movies, causing terrible social havoc. He also treated Helena Bonham Carter to pleasures similar to those enjoyed by Geena Davis in Thelma And Louise. Her appreciation was ear-splitting. For servicing her so expertly, Brad received another $17 million. For Davis it had been just $6,000.
After this, Pitt took a brief step down in budget for Snatch. A wild caper involving a diamond heist, Russian and American mafia and all manner of underworld shenanigans, this saw him as a gypsy boxer brought in as a ringer by two failing promoters (he honed his boxing skills at Ricky English's gym in Watford). The movie saw him dusting off his Devil's Own accent and, inspired by his co-star Benicio Del Toro's recent performance in The Usual Suspects, taking it to the Nth degree. Hilariously, no one could understand him, not even the other people in the film.
He followed this with The Mexican which, pairing him with Julia Roberts, could easily have been a blockbusting coupling of Hollywood's two most glamorous stars. Instead, it was a freaked-out road movie, with the glitzy duo spending very little screen time together. Here Brad was a small time crook who has to pay offf a debt to crime lord Gene Hackman by travelling to Mexico and picking up a priceless handgun, causing girlfriend Roberts to leave him and take off for Vegas. Poor Pitt has a terrible time. Fearful of Hackman, dominated and confused by Roberts and deceived and mocked by the Mexican locals, he keeps digging his hole deeper - a situation not helped by his wretched Spanish, essentially English with an O added at the end of each word.
The critics were disappointed by The Mexican's failure to play the Pitt-Roberts card. They weren't too keen on his next outing either, Spy Game. This saw him as the protege of retiring CIA spymaster Robert Redford - thus bringing together two generations of actors who had to battle against the effects of their own looks in order to gain respect. The movie begins with Pitt in a Chinese prison and Redford having 24 hours to save him. During the course of this fraught rescue mission, we flash back to see how an idealistic Pitt was recruited by Redford after Vietnam and how falling for a dodgy Catherine McCormack got him into this mess. It was intriguing stuff, but generally spoiled by director Tony Scott's insistence on super-snappy editing that did not allow any character to grow.
Now, in an odd subversion of his leading man status, Brad chose to join an ensemble cast for Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's 11, an update of the 1960 Rat Pack flick. This saw George Clooney as Danny Ocean, gathering a team of crack crooks to turn over a Vegas casino. Brad would play his trusty sidekick Rusty Ryan who, while casing the joint, notices that casino boss Andy Garcia is going out with Ocean's former wife (Julia Roberts, again). Could emotional stuff be getting in the way? Of course, it does, adding extra enjoyment to one of the slickest and smartest crime movies of recent times.
After this huge hit, Pitt would not be seen on screen for another three years, other than cameos for his new buddies Soderbergh and Clooney. First, alongside a host of stars including Roberts and his fomer Johnny Suede cohort Catherine Keener, he popped up in Soderbergh's $2 million budget Full Frontal, a cinematic curio of films within films within films. Deep in there would be Brad, appearing mostly on mag covers and playback video, playing a superstar playing a tough cop in a new movie. Full Frontal would be attacked as a major indulgence on the part of Soderbergh and his cast, with only Pitt escaping criticism. It was noted that he was the least actorly and pretentious of them, and more than willing to send himself up, as was Seven's director David Fincher, who here fawned over Pitt very amusingly.
The next cameo would see Brad playing it for laughs once more, in Clooney's Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, written by Charlie Kaufman and based on the cult memoirs of Chuck Barris, a game show host who claimed to have also been an assassin for the CIA. Working for free, Pitt would pop up in a flashback to an episode of TV show The Dating Game, where hopefuls would choose from three prospective spouses. Brad, and his Ocean's 11 co-star Matt Damon, would naturally be turned down in favour of Bachelor Number 3. With Julia Roberts also putting in an appearance, it was the fourth time in two years these major stars had graced the same credit listing.
2003 would see Pitt lend his voice to the titular hero of the animated Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas. But this was just a prelude to a far more ambitious mythical epic, Wolfgang Petersen's $220 million Troy. Having consciously avoided starring roles that played up his looks, now Brad went the whole hog as Achilles, the elite warrior charged by King Agamemnon to lead the seige of Troy and win back the stolen wife of his brother Menelaus. Petersen pulled out the stops in making Pitt look like a Greek god. Pitt, on the other hand, never keen to pose when he could be acting, attempted to deepen his character by playing Achilles as an embittered man with a profound disrespect for authority and an unhealthy death wish. Even so, it was his titanic battle with Eric Bana's Hector that really stood out in a movie marked by its spectacular SFX.
Such was the scope of Troy that Pitt was forced to pull out of Darren Aronofsky's sci-fi epic The Fountain. Coincidentally, a severe pulling of his Achilles' tendon also put back the filming of a forthcoming effort, a return to Soderbergh and Clooney with Ocean's 12, where the old gang regroup to pull off three major European heists. In the meantime there would be Mr And Mrs Smith, where Brad and Angelina Jolie would play a happy husband and wife who, both being secret assassins, discover they've been hired to kill each other.
Brad Pitt now chooses his parts carefully, and with the taste you'd expect from a very well-read man with a keen interest in architecture. Now happily married to Friends star Jennifer Aniston (in their marriage vows she swore to always make his favourite banana milkshake, while he vowed to "split the difference on the thermostat"), he's reached an enviable height. Living in a plush LA home built in the 30s for Frederic March, and wed to a woman named in 2003 as Forbes' Number One Global Celebrity, how bad could it be? But there's still a down-side. For instance, Seven Years In Tibet got him banned from entering China. And fame can be a pain - in 1999, one Athena Rolando snuck into his house, dressed in his clothes and stuck around for 10 hours, before the alarms went off. He would also, surely, love to replicate his wife's success in being nominated for an Independent Spirit award.
But mostly it's good. All he really needs now is for the diehard critics to finally accept that he's not just a screen stud. As he's said himself: "One, it's boring. Two, it's stupid. And three, it's death". Good luck to him - he deserves better.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (19.01.1809 - 07.10.1849) - American writer.

Edgar Allan Poe was an outstanding American writer, poet and essayist. He was also a literary critic and editor. Some people accept him as the father of modern detective story. Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in the acting family.
The life of touring actors involved constant travelling which wasn’t easy with little children. So, Edgar was temporarily left to live with his grandfather. When he was still little his mother died, while his father left their family long before that. As a result, Edgar was adopted by John Allan’s family who was a rich merchant.
Later on, he was educated at a prestigious boarding school in England. At the age of fifteen he entered a prestigious university. As a student he was often seen gambling and drinking, which provoked a series of conflicts with his stepfather. After one of such conflicts he left his home. His literary career began around 1827, when he published a collection of poems.
For two years he served at the army under a false name. Surprisingly, his foster parents helped him financially to publish new books in Boston. They were all poems, which didn’t have that much success at first. In 1930 he entered the Military Academy, which he soon left. This step caused the final break with his father and Poe found himself again on the verge of poverty.
As a serious writer he launched his first book in 1833. It was called “A manuscript found in a bottle”. This work was published in a popular Baltimore paper. Most of his publications made during 1830s were later put into a famous two-volume almanac. At the age of twenty-seven the writer married his cousin Virginia Eliza and moved to New York in search for a better-paid job.
Due to crisis he had to forget about this idea. After all he moved to Philadelphia and lived at his mother-in-law’s house. He worked for several magazines there and published about thirty stories. One of his most famous books “The Fall of the House of Usher” appeared at that time. It was an autobiographical novel.
Starting from 1840s he worked on a number of detective stories, which brought him national recognition. However, he became world famous after writing the poem “The Raven” (1845). He had an innovative approach to poetry and verse composing, which couldn’t go unnoticed. Two years later his wife fell ill. Poe himself fell into a deep depression and started drinking a lot.
The poet died in 1849 at the age of forty. He was found in an unconscious state after one of his railroad trips and brought to Baltimore hospital. The cause of his death is still a subject of numerous debates. His original style of writing has later found many followers in Europe, among them Wilde, Balmont, Bryusov and some other prominent writers.

Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman (09.06.1981) - American actress.

Natalie Portman (nee Hershlag) is a famous American and Israeli film star. She became well-known after her debut role in the film “Leon” (1994). Natalie was born on June 9th, 1981, in Jerusalem. Her father is a successful doctor and her mother is currently Natalie’s personal agent. The stage name “Portman” is her Jewish-Russian grandmother’s maiden name. When she was three, her family moved to the USA, where Natalie’s father was planning to improve his medical skills. At first they lived in Washington D. C. and she attended a Jewish Day School. Then they moved to Connecticut and after that to New York. In 1990 they finally settled on Long Island. At the moment she has a dual citizenship, because she loves living in both countries: the USA and Israel.
From the very childhood Natalie attended dance classes. In 1998, while studying at high school, she became the co-author of one important research, which gave her the opportunity to participate in academic competition. To take part in the semi-final of this competition she even missed the premiere of  “Star Wars: Episode I”, where she played one of the leading roles. In 2003 she graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology. Education is a very important part of her life. In addition to her two native languages, Hebrew and English, Natalie studied French, German, Japanese and Arabic.
She was a serious kid, the type who knew what she wanted in life and how to achieve it. When she was eleven, she was offered to become a model but refused it, as she wanted to concentrate on the career of an actress. In 1994, Natalie was casting for one of the Luc Besson’s film called “Leon”. She was chosen out of many other applicants to play the leading role - a girl named Matilda who was friends with the kind-hearted criminal Leon. The film received lots of positive reviews and brought Natalie fame and popularity. At that time she was only thirteen. After this role she had many other interesting offers.
In 1999, she started starring in the legendary “Star Wars” film. The first episode was called “The Phantom Menace”. This was followed by shooting of the film “Anywhere but Here”, where she played with Susan Sarandon. For this picture Natalie was nominated for the “Golden Globe”. For the film “Closer”, which was released in 2004, she was nominated for an Oscar. However, the film that brought her numerous awards was yet to come. It was the psychological thriller “Black Swan”, released in 2010. A year later she gave birth to her first son. According to Natalie, she is not going to devote all her life to acting. There are many other interests in her life, such as advocating for animal rights and environmental causes, aiding businesses in developing countries, etc.

Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley (08.01.1935 - 16.08.1977) - American singer.

Elvis Aaron Presley was an American singer, musician and actor. He is a cultural icon, often known simply as Elvis; also "The King of Rock 'n' Roll", or simply "The King".
Presley began his career as one of the first performers of rockabilly, an uptempo fusion of country and rhythm and blues with a strong back beat. His novel versions of existing songs, mixing "black" and "white" sounds, made him popular — and controversial — as did his uninhibited stage and television performances. He recorded songs in the rock and roll genre, with tracks like "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock" later embodying the style. Presley had a versatile voice and had unusually wide success encompassing other genres, including gospel, blues, ballads and pop. To date, he is the only performer to have been inducted into four separate music halls of fame.
In the sixties, Presley made the majority of his thirty-three movies — mainly poorly reviewed musicals. 1968 saw a critically-acclaimed return to live music, followed by performances in Las Vegas and across the U.S. Throughout his career, he set records for concert attendance, television ratings and recordings sales. He is one of the best-selling and most influential artists in the history of popular music. Though known to have health problems later in life, his death — aged 42 — shocked his fans worldwide.
Presley was born in a two-room house, built by his father, in Tupelo, Mississippi. He was the second of identical twins — his brother was stillborn and given the name Jesse Garon. He grew up as an only child and "was, everyone agreed, unusually close to his mother". The family lived just above the poverty line in East Tupelo and attended the Assembly of God church. Vernon Presley has been described as "taciturn to the point of sullenness"and as "a weakling, a malingerer, always averse to work and responsibility". In 1938 he was convicted and jailed for an eight-dollar check forgery. He was released after serving eight months, but this event deeply influenced the life of the young family. During her husband's absence, Gladys, a wife who was "voluble, lively, full of spunk." lost the family home. Priscilla Presley describes her as "a surreptitious drinker and alcoholic."
At school, Presley was teased by his fellow classmates; they threw "things at him — rotten fruit and stuff — because he was different, because he was quiet and he stuttered and he was a mama's boy".
Aged ten, he made his first public performance in a singing contest at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show. Dressed as a cowboy, the young Presley had to stand on a chair to reach the microphone and sang Red Foley's "Old Shep". He won second prize.
In 1946, Presley's mother took Elvis to Tupelo Hardware to get him a birthday present. Although he wanted a rifle, he left the store with a $7.90 guitar. November 1948 saw the Presleys move to Memphis, allegedly because Vernon — as well as needing work — had to escape the law for transporting "bootlegger" liquor. In 1949, they lived at Lauderdale Courts — a public housing development — in one of Memphis, Tennessee's poorer sections. Presley practiced guitar playing in the basement laundry room and also played in a five-piece band with other tenants. Another resident, Johnny Burnette, recalled: "Wherever Elvis went he'd have his guitar slung across his back... He used to go down to the fire station and sing to the boys there... [H]e'd go in to one of the cafes or bars... Then some folks would say: 'Let's hear you sing, boy.'"
Presley attended L. C. Humes High school and occasionally worked evenings to boost the family income. He began to grow his sideburns longer and dress in the wild, flashy clothes of Lansky Brothers on Beale Street. Presley stood out, especially in the conservative Deep South of the 1950s and he was mocked and bullied for it. He enrolled in the school's ROTC and Christmas, 1952 saw Presley perform in the "Annual Minstrel Show" sponsored by the Humes High Band. Presley received most applause — he sang "Cold Cold Icy Fingers" and gave an encore of "Till I Waltz Again With You"
After graduation, Presley was still a rather shy person, a "kid who had spent scarcely a night away from home". His third job was driving a truck for the Crown Electric Company. He began wearing his hair longer with a "ducktail" — the style of truck drivers at that time.
On July 18, 1953, Presley went to the Memphis Recording Service at the Sun Record Company (now commonly known as Sun Studios). He paid $3.98 to record the first of two double-sided 'demo' acetates — "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". Presley reportedly gave the acetate to his mother as a much-belated extra birthday present, though the Presleys didn't own a record player at the time. Returning to Sun Studios on January 4, 1954, he recorded a second acetate, "I'll Never Stand in Your Way"/"It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You".
Sun Records founder Sam Phillips had already cut the first records by blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf and Junior Parker. He thought a combination of black blues and boogie-woogie music might become very popular among white people — if presented in the right way. In the spring, Presley auditioned for an amateur gospel quartet, The Songfellows, and a professional band. Both groups turned him down.
Phillips had acquired a demo record — "Without Love (There Is Nothing)". Unable to identify the demo's vocalist, his assistant Marion Keisker reminded him about the young truck driver and she called him on June 26, 1954. Presley was not able to do justice to the song (though he would record it years later). Phillips did ask the young singer to perform some of the many other songs he knew and he invited local Western swing musicians Winfield "Scotty" Moore (electric guitar) and Bill Black (slap bass) to check Presley out. Scotty and Bill auditioned Presley on Sunday, July 4, 1954, at Moore's house. Neither musician was overly impressed with the young singer, but they agreed a studio session would be useful to see what they had. During a break at the studios on July 5, Presley began "acting the fool" with Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right (Mama)", a blues song. When the other two musicians joined in, Phillips got them to restart and began recording. This was the bright, upbeat sound he had been looking out for. Black remarked, "Damn. Get that on the radio and they'll run us out of town." The group recorded four songs during that session, including Bill Monroe's Blue Moon of Kentucky, a bluegrass waltz. After an early take, Phillips can be heard on tape saying: "Fine, man. Hell, that's different — that's a pop song now, just about."
To gauge professional and public reaction, Phillips took several acetates of the session to DJ Dewey Phillips (no relation) at Memphis radio station WHBQ (The Red, Hot And Blue show). "That's All Right" subsequently received its first play on July 8, 1954. A week later, Sun had received some 6,000 advanced orders for "That's All Right"/"Blue Moon of Kentucky", which was released on July 19, 1954. From August 18 through December 8, "Blue Moon of Kentucky" was consistently higher in the charts, then both sides began to chart across the South, from Virginia to Texas.
Moore and Black left their band, The Starlight Wranglers, to work full-time with Presley. They began regular live performances in Memphis by promoting Presley's first Sun single. They played at the Bon Air, a club used by hard-drinking lovers of hillbilly music. Johnny Cash later recalled Presley playing during breaks at the Eagle’s Nest club.
At the Overton Park Shell (July 30, 1954), Presley, Moore, and Black were billed as The Blue Moon Boys, with Slim Whitman headlining. Presley is said to have been so nervous during this show that his legs shook uncontrollably. His wide-legged pants emphasized his leg movements, apparently causing the young women in the audience to go "crazy". Though initially uncertain about what caused the fans to scream, Presley consciously incorporated similar movements into future shows. DJ and promoter Bob Neal, who had been approached by Sam Phillips to get Presley on the Overton Park bill, was now the trio's manager (taking over from Scotty Moore).
Presley appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, on October 2; Hank Snow introduced Presley on stage. He performed "Blue Moon of Kentucky" but received only a polite response. Afterwards, the singer was allegedly told: "Boy, you’d better keep driving that truck."
Country music promoter and manager Tillman Franks booked Presley's first appearance on Louisiana Hayride (October 16, 1954). Before making the booking, Franks — never having seen Presley — referred to him as "that new black singer with the funny name". During the first set, the reaction was muted, but the second show had a younger audience and Franks advised Presley to "Let it all go!" House drummer D.J. Fontana, who had worked in strip clubs, was able to use beats to accentuate Presley's movements and — along with Bill Black's usual enthusiastic stage antics — the crowd was more responsive.
According to one source, "Audiences had never before heard music like Presley played, and they had never before seen anyone who performed like Presley either. The shy, polite, mumbling boy gained self-confidence with every appearance, which soon led to a transformation on stage. People watching the show were astounded and shocked, both by the ferocity of his performance, and the crowd’s reaction to it... Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time in Odessa, Texas: 'His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing... I just didn’t know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it.' 'He’s the new rage,' said a Louisiana radio executive... 'Sings hillbilly in R&B time. Can you figure that out. He wears pink pants and a black coat.'" Sam Phillips said Presley "put every ounce of emotion ... into every song, almost as if he was incapable of holding back". When he collapsed after a concert in Florida, a doctor warned him to slow down because he worked as hard in twenty minutes as the average laborer did in eight hours.
Presley's sound was proving hard to categorize — he had been billed or labeled in the media as "The King of Western Bop", "The Hillbilly Cat", and "The Memphis Flash".
On August 15, 1955, he was signed to a one-year contract with "Hank Snow Attractions", a company owned by Hank Snow and "Colonel" Tom Parker. Parker became Presley's manager thereafter. By August 1955, Sun Studios had released ten sides credited to "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill", all typical of the developing Presley style.
Several major record labels had shown interest in signing Presley. On November 21, 1955, Parker and Phillips negotiated a deal with RCA Victor Records to acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $35,000.
To increase the singer's exposure, Parker finally brought Presley to television (In March 1955, Presley had failed a TV audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts). He had the singer booked for six of the Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show (CBS), beginning January 28, 1956, when he was introduced by Cleveland DJ Bill Randle. Parker also obtained a lucrative deal with Milton Berle (NBC) for two appearances.
On January 27, Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", was released. By April it reached number one in the U.S. and would sell a million copies. On March 23, RCA released the first Presley album: Elvis Presley. As with the Sun recordings, the majority of the tracks were songs by or from country artists.
From April 23, he had a two-week booking at the Venus Room of the New Frontier Hotel, Las Vegas — billed this time as "the Atomic Powered Singer". His performances were badly received, by critics and guests (it was an older, more conservative audience). However, Presley, Scotty and Bill saw Freddie Bell and the Bellboys live in Vegas, and liked their version of Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog". By May 16, Presley had added the song to his own act.
Soon after an April 3 appearance for The Milton Berle Show, shot onboard an aircraft carrier in San Diego, Presley, Moore and Black took a chartered flight to Nashville for a recording session. The pilot got lost and further mishaps along the way left all three badly shaken. After more hectic touring, Presley returned to The Milton Berle Show on June 5 and performed "Hound Dog" (without his guitar). After singing it uptempo, he then began a slower version. His exaggerated, straight-legged shuffle around the microphone stand stirred the audience — as did his vigorous leg shaking and hip thrusts in time to the beat.
Presley's "gyrations" created a storm of controversy — even eclipsing the 'communist threat' head-lines prevalent at the time. The next day's press used such words as "vulgar" and "obscene" because of the strong sexual content perceived in his act. Presley was obliged to explain himself on the local New York City TV show Hy Gardner Calling: "Rock and roll music, if you like it, and you feel it, you can't help but move to it. That's what happens to me. I have to move around. I can't stand still. I've tried it, and I can't do it".
The Milton Berle Show appearances drew such huge ratings that Steve Allen (NBC), not a fan of rock and roll, booked him for one appearance, in New York. Allen announced: "... We want to do a show the whole family can watch and enjoy. And that’s what we always do." After Allen introduced "the new Elvis" (in white bow tie and black tails), he remarked: "You are certainly being a good sport about the whole thing." Presley then sang "Hound Dog" to a top hat and bow tie-wearing Basset Hound sat on a pedestal (the performance lasted less than one minute). According to author Jake Austen, "the way Steve Allen treated Elvis Presley was his federal crime. Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd... [he] set things up so that Presley would show his contrition..." The day after (July 2), Presley, Scotty, and Bill recorded the single "Hound Dog", making thirty takes before Elvis was satisfied. Scotty Moore later said they were "all angry about their treatment the previous night". (Presley often referred to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career. ) A few days later, Presley made a "triumphant" outdoor appearance in Memphis at which he announced: "You know, those people in New York are not gone change me none. I'm gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight."
Though Presley had been unhappy with the Steve Allen appearance, Allen's show had, for the first time, beaten The Ed Sullivan Show in the Sunday night ratings, prompting a previously critical Sullivan (CBS) to book Presley for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000.
Country vocalists The Jordanaires accompanied Presley on The Steve Allen Show and their first recording session with him was July 2, for the recording of "Any Way You Want Me". The Jordanaires would work with the singer through the 1960s.
Presley's first Ed Sullivan appearance (September 9, 1956) was seen by an estimated 55-60 million viewers. During the second, Presley only had to shake his legs to get screams from the audience, which a bemused Sullivan didn't notice him doing when stood next to the singer. On the third show, the family-minded Sullivan censored Presley's "gyrations": he was shown only above the waist. According to the show's director, Marlo Lewis, Sullivan told him that Presley was "hangin' some kind of device in the crotch of his pants" and that it was "waving back and forth" when the singer moved. Sullivan said: "We can't have that on a Sunday night. That's a church night". Although Lewis ordered camera two to film only Presley's chest and head, he never believed the "device" was there at all. Despite his misgivings, Sullivan still declared at the end of the show: "This is a real decent, fine boy. We've never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we've had with you... you're thoroughly all right."
On November 16, Presley's first movie Love Me Tender was released. It was panned by the critics, but did well at the box office.
Presley's decline continued. A journalist recalled: "Elvis Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self... he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts." In Alexandria, Louisiana, a journalist complained that the singer was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand". In Baton Rouge, Presley didn’t go on stage at all. He was unable to get out of his hotel bed and the rest of the tour was cancelled.
Fans, too, Guralnick relates, "were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Elvis, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his [spiritualism] books". In Knoxville, Tennessee (May 20), "there was no longer any pretense of keeping up appearances... The idea was simply to get Elvis out onstage and keep him upright for the hour he was scheduled to perform". Thereafter, Presley struggled through every show. Despite his obvious problems, appearances in Omaha, Nebraska and Rapid City, South Dakota were recorded for an upcoming album and a CBS-TV special: Elvis In Concert.
Rick Stanley (a step-brother) recalls that Presley was almost bedridden during his last year. "We'd fly into a city and he'd go right into bed as soon as we got there. We'd have to get him up to do the show." In Rapid City, "he was so nervous on stage that he could hardly talk... He was undoubtedly painfully aware of how he looked, and he knew that in his condition, he could not perform any significant movement. He looked, moved, and gestured like an overweight old man with crippling arthritis". A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat, recounting things like his favourite Monty Python sketches and past japes, but "mostly there was a grim obsessiveness... a paranoia about people, germs... future events, that put Billy in mind on more than one occasion of Howard Hughes".
A book was published — the first expose to detail Presley's years of drug misuse. Written with input from three of Presley's "Memphis Mafia", the book was the authors' revenge for them being sacked and a plea to get Presley to face up to reality. The singer "was devastated by the book. Here were his close friends who had written serious stuff that would affect his life. He felt betrayed".
Presley's final performance was in Indianapolis at the Market Square Arena, (June 26).
August 17, 1977, was to be the start of another tour. However, at "Graceland" the day before, Presley was found on the floor of his bathroom by his fiancee, Ginger Alden. According to the medical investigator, Presley had "stumbled or crawled several feet before he died". He was officially pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m. at the Baptist Memorial Hospital.
His funeral was a national media event. Hundreds of thousands of fans, the press and celebrities lined the streets hoping to see the open casket in "Graceland" or to witness the funeral. Amongst the mourners were Ann-Margret (who had remained close to Presley) and his ex-wife. U.S. President Jimmy Carter issued a statement. Presley was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery, Memphis, next to his mother. After an attempt to steal the body, his — and his mother's — remains were reburied at "Graceland" in the Meditation Gardens.

Alla Pugacheva

Alla Pugacheva (15.04.1949) - Russian singer.

Alla Pugacheva is a famous Russian singer, actress, composer and a successful producer. She has both an iconic status across the former Soviet countries and international recognition. In 1997, she participated in Eurovision. Her repertoire includes more than 500 songs in various languages: Russian, Ukrainian, English, Hebrew, French, etc. She was born on April 15th, 1949 in Moscow. Her parents were both war veterans. Alla was their second child. From the very childhood she had passion for music and singing. At the age of five, she appeared on stage for the first time. She grew up in the postwar environment and that influenced her character a lot. At school Alla had behavior problems, nevertheless she was a diligent student.
In 1964, she graduated from music school and went to study at the Ippolitov-Ivanov music. Despite the fact that she could become a promising pianist, she chose to study at the choral-conducting department. One year later she recorded her first track “Robot”. In 1969, she was offered the place of a soloist in one Lipetsk vocal-instrumental band. In 1974, she joined the band “Merry Folks”. As a part of this band, Alla got “Golden Orpheus” for her song “Harlequin”. After that she started working with a prominent Soviet composer Michael Tariverdiev. She sang his song in Eldar Ryazanov’s film “The Irony of Fate”. In 1977, she appeared in the musical film “The Woman Who Sings”.
She soon became highly recognizable and famous. Her voice was considered to be best across the USSR. Along with her concert activity, she participated in many festivals and song contests. Thus, in 1974 she got the third prize at the fifth All-Union competition. In 1978, she received the Grand Prix at the Polish festival “Sopot-78” for her song “Kings can do everything”. In June 1982 she performed in Paris at the “Olympia” hall. In November of the same year she gave a concert in Italy. In 1988, she created and led the studio “Song Theater”. As an artistic director of the theater she organized numerous tours for the beginner artists. Most of them later became popular stars.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Alla became the honored Diva of the Russian scene. She was the co-organizer of the festival “Song of the Year”, the official Muse of the annual contest “New Wave” in Latvia. In March of 2010 the Diva decided to quit the stage. She gave a series of farewell concerts across the country and publicly declared that her concert activity is over. During her life Pugacheva had several husbands. With her first husband, who was a Lithuanian circus performer, she had a daughter Kristina. Her third husband was the co-producer of “Song Thater”. Her next husband was Philipp Kirkorov - one of the most popular singers in Russia. He was eighteen years younger than Alla. At the moment, she is in relationship with a popular comedian Maxim Galkin.

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin (born 07.10.1952) - Russian politician.

Putin was born in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg since 1991 and before 1914). His biography, translated into English under the title First Person and based on interviews conducted with Putin in 2000 was paid for by his election campaign. It speaks of humble beginnings, including early years in a rat-infested tenement in a communal apartment. According to his biography, in his youth he was eager to emulate the intelligence officer characters played on the Soviet screen by actors such as Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Georgiy Zhzhonov.
In the same book, Putin notes that his paternal grandfather, a chef by profession, was brought to the Moscow suburbs to serve as a cook, at one of Stalin's dachas. In "The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Sebag Montefiore, a footnote on page 300 cites Putin as saying that while his grandfather did not discuss his work very often, he recalled serving meals to Rasputin as a boy and also prepared food for Lenin. His mother was a factory worker and his father was conscripted into the navy, where he served in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s. His father subsequently served with the land forces during the Second World War. Two older brothers were born in the mid-1930s; one died within a few months of birth; the second succumbed to diphtheria during the siege of Leningrad.
Putin graduated from the International Department of the Law Faculty of the Leningrad State University in 1975 and was recruited into the KGB. In First Person, Putin described to journalists his early duties in the KGB, which included suppressing dissident activities in Leningrad.
From 1985 to 1990 the KGB stationed Putin in Dresden, East Germany, in what he regards as a minor position. Following the collapse of the East German regime, Putin was recalled to the Soviet Union and returned to Leningrad, where in June 1990 he assumed a position with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University, reporting to the Vice-Rector. In June 1991, he was appointed head of the International Committee of the St Petersburg Mayor's office, with responsibility for promoting international relations and foreign investments.
Putin formally resigned from the state security services on August 20, 1991, during the KGB-supported abortive putsch against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1994 he became First Deputy Chairman of the city of Saint Petersburg, a position he retained until he was called to Moscow, in August 1996, to serve in a variety of senior positions in Boris Yeltsin 's second Administration. He was the first civilian head of the FSB (the successor agency to the KGB) from July 1998 to August 1999, and also served as Secretary of the Security Council from March to August 1999.
During the 1990s, Putin received a sub-doctoral level degree in economics from a mining institute in St Petersburg. His dissertation was titled "The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations."
Putin was appointed Chairman (predsedatel', or prime minister) of the Government of the Russian Federation by President Boris Yeltsin in August 1999, making him Russia's fifth prime minister in less than eighteen months. On his appointment, few expected Putin, a virtual unknown, to last any longer than his predecessors. Yeltsin's main opponents and would-be successors, Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov and former Chairman of the Russian Government Yevgeniy Primakov, were already campaigning to replace the ailing president, and fought hard to prevent Putin's emergence as a potential successor. Putin's law-and-order image and his unrelenting approach to the renewed crisis in Chechnya (see below) soon combined to raise his popularity and allowed him to overtake all rivals. While not formally associated with any party, Putin was supported by the newly formed Edinstvo (unity) faction, which won the largest percentage of the popular vote in the December 1999 Duma elections. Putin was reappointed as Chairman of the Government, and seemed ideally positioned to win the presidency in elections due the following summer. His rise to Russia's highest office ended up being even more rapid: on December 31, 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and, according to the constitution, Putin was appointed as the second (acting) President of the Russian Federation. Presidential elections were held March 26, 2000, which Putin won in the first round. Later Putin granted the former president and his family full immunity from prosecution (via presidential decree). Shortly before, Yeltsin and his family had been und scrutiny for charges related to money-laundering by the russian and swiss authorities.
After many years of scandal, erratic policy making and a general sense of national malaise under the aged, awkward and ailing Yeltsin, Putin's election appeared to mark a new beginning in Russia's post-Soviet history. However, the new president's election was due in no small measure to Yeltsin's inner circle, who had selected and supported Putin with a view to maintaining their own power and privilege. As Putin's new administration took shape, members of the Yeltsin-era nomenklatura – including Chief of Staff Alexander Voloshin and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov – retained significant control over the policies and direction of the new government. On the other hand, Putin was also backed by a team of economic reformers from his native St Petersburg, and could rely as well on support from the siloviki. (The latter group are defined as members of Russia's still-powerful security services, who regard themselves as the defenders of Russia's permanent national interests in the face of rapacious politicians and officials, and who are also well-informed about all aspects of Russia's political and economic life.) The tension – and cooperation – between these various groups was a central feature of Putin's first term in office.
Upon his election, Putin undertook measures to restore the primacy of the Kremlin in Russia's political life. Under Yeltsin, Russia's 89 sub-federal political territories (republics, oblasts, krai, and Moscow and St Petersburg) had been granted unprecedented autonomy. While this radical move had been intended to help Yeltsin's political maneuvers in the early 1990s, it also led to a highly irregular federalism and contributed to the growth of separatist movements, most notably in Chechnya. One of Putin's first acts, therefore, was to attempt to restore what he referred to as the "power vertical" – i.e. a return to the traditional top-down federal system. As a first step, Putin announced the appointment of seven presidential "plenipotentiary representatives" who were explicitly charged with coordinating federal activity in newly-defined super-regions. While billed as a seminal break with Yeltsin-era federalism, for a variety of reasons the plenipotentiary system has encountered mixed success. Of more lasting significance, Putin also instituted a major reform of Russia's upper house of parliament, the Federation Council. Putin and his team also entered into head-on confrontations with several uncooperative governors accused of corruption, though with only mixed success.
The initial months of Putin's first term were also marked by a settling of scores among elite financial-industrial groups, whose monetary resources and media empires had been critical weapons in the domestic political war that had been waged over the previous year. Leading members of the old Yeltsin group – known informally as "the Family" – were determined to punish the losing camp, headed by Vladimir Gusinsky, which had backed the Primakov/Luzhkov ticket. Gusinsky had rendered himself vulnerable since his media empire was a chronic money loser and was deeply indebted, surviving on loans from Gazprom and the Luzkhov-controlled Bank of Moscow. Within a year of Putin's election, Gusinsky went from being a would-be kingmaker to living in self-imposed exile; his once-influential media conglomerate (Media-MOST) dissolved into bankruptcy due to a cut off in credits by state-owned and state-allied businesses and under the weight of criminal and civil court decisions.
The first acute crisis which Putin faced as president arose in August 2000, when the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank off the Kola peninsula, killing 118 sailors on board. Many people across a wide spectrum of Russian society were angered by the failure of the government and the military to release credible information about the scale and certainty of the disaster in first days of the tragedy. After several days of mounting public confusion and anger, Putin cut short his vacation and returned to Moscow to take charge of the crisis. Until the submarine was raised, the governmental commission of investigation into the disaster took into account various versions including a collision with a "NATO" submarine (a theory that was never supported by evidence and which was denied by the Alliance states). While Putin was criticised by the Russian media for his inaction during the initial stages of the crisis, it did not have a lasting effect on his image and popularity.
Putin has been unenthusiastic about erasing Russia's Soviet past from memory — the previous policy of Boris Yeltsin aimed primarily at his Communist rivals. He has stated his belief that whatever the crimes of the Communist regime, it was nevertheless an important part of Russian history and has a formative influence on the creation of modern Russian society. As a result, some Soviet-era symbols have been allowed to return to Russia, such as the trademark red military flag, the "Soviet Star" crest, and the Soviet national anthem (although with revised lyrics) – all of which have resonated well with the majority of Russia's population. In responding to critics of these moves, Putin has argued that he is the president of all Russians — including those such as the retirees who lost out in the post-Soviet transformation, and who understandably cling to symbols of the past.
A pro-Putin United Russia party won a landslide victory in the 2003 parliamentary elections. Official foreign observers called the election itself free, but noted that the largely government-run media, especially Russian national TV, had massively and unfairly campaigned for the governing party only. Indeed, most Russian TV stations are now controlled directly or indirectly by the Kremlin. While reaching a much more limited audience, newspapers are more diverse; some are critical of the Kremlin, while others promote the government line. One of the two main business newspapers, Kommersant, is controlled by Boris Berezovsky, while the other – the highly respected Vedomosti – is co-owned by the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Domestic and foreign critics accuse Putin of having orchestrated the trials of oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and later Mikhail Khodorkovsky as part of an effort by his Kremlin to gain control over the media and large sectors of the Russian economy. For its part, Putin's administration has argued that its actions against the oligarchs are founded in the letter and spirit of the law, and are intended to contain and reverse serious damage inflicted on Russia's economy by years of insider capitalism.
On 24 February 2004, less than a month prior to the elections, Putin dismissed Prime Minister Kasyanov and the entire Russian cabinet and appointed Viktor Khristenko acting prime minister. On March 1, he appointed Mikhail Fradkov to the position.
On March 14, 2004, Putin won re-election to the presidency for a second term, earning 71 percent of the vote. Again, there was massive and one-sided campaigning for Putin by Russian television channels, most of which are state owned and controlled. Nevertheless, the election campaign and the actual balloting were both declared "free and fair" by an international observation mission run by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
On September 13, 2004, following the Beslan school hostage crisis, and nearly-concurrent Chechen terrorist attacks in Moscow, Putin launched an initiative to replace the election of regional governors with a system whereby they would be proposed by the President and approved or disapproved by regional legislatures. Opponents of this measure, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Colin Powell, criticised it as a step away from democracy in Russia and a return to the centrally run political apparatus of the Soviet era. On that same day, Putin also publicly backed a plan by the Central Elections Commission for the election of Duma deputies based entirely on proportional representation, ending the election of half of the legislators from single-member constituencies.
On April 25, 2005, Putin caused some controversy when, in a nationally televised speech before the Duma, he referred to the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." This remark was critically received in the West and in some neighboring states; Putin subsequently clarified that he was not praising the former Soviet Union but rather highlighting in an altogether objective fashion the dramatic impact the collapse of the USSR had had on the world, particularly on the economic and social well-being of the populace from countries making up the former USSR and the displacement of people caused in part by the anti-Russian backlash in many of these countries.
One of the most controversial aspects of Putin's second term was the prosecution of Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, President of Yukos oil company. While much of the international press saw this as a reaction against a man who was funding political opponents of the Kremlin, both liberal and Communist, the Russian government has argued that Khodorkovsky was in fact engaged in corrupting a large segment of the Duma to prevent changes in the tax code aimed at taxing windfall profits and closing offshore tax evasion vehicles. Certainly, many of the initial privatizations, including that of Yukos, are widely believed to have been fraudulent (Yukos, valued at some $30bn in 2004, had been privatized for $110 million), and like the other oligarchic groups, the Yukos-Menatep name has been frequently tarred with accusations of links to criminal organisations. Oligarchs who have been more willing to toe the Kremlin line, such as Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Potanin, have not had their fortunes subjected to the same intense and critical examination.
Putin's rise to public office in August 1999 coincided with an aggressive resurgence of the near-dormant conflict in the North Caucasus, when Chechen extremists regrouped and invaded neighbouring Daghestan. Both in Russia and abroad, Putin's public image was forged by his tough handling of this dire challenge. During the autumn 1999 campaign for the Duma, Kremlin-controlled or allied media accused Putin's chief rivals of being soft on terrorism. On assuming the role of acting President on December 31, 1999, Putin proceeded on a previously scheduled visit to Russian troops in Chechnya; one of the earliest images Russians saw of their new leader was the acting president presenting hunting knives to soldiers. Throughout the winter of 2000, Putin's government regularly claimed that victory was at hand. In recent years, with the situation stalemated, Putin has distanced himself from the management of the continuing conflict.
While President Putin is criticized as an autocrat by some of his Western counterparts, his relationships with US President George W. Bush, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, French President Jacques Chirac, and the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are apparently friendly. Putin's relationship with Germany's new Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is expected to be "cooler" and "more business-like" than his partnership with Gerhard Schroder.
During his time in office, Putin has attempted to strengthen relations with other members of the CIS. The "near abroad" zone of traditional Russian influence has again become a foreign policy priority under Putin, as the EU and NATO have grown to encompass much of Central Europe and, more recently, the Baltic states. While tacitly accepting the enlargement of NATO into the Baltic states, Putin attempted to increase Russia's influence over Belarus and Ukraine.
Putin surprised many Russian nationalists and even his own defense minister when, in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States, he agreed to the establishment of coalition military bases in Central Asia before and during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Russian nationalists objected to the establishment of any US military presence on the territory of the former Soviet Union, and had expected Putin to keep the US out of the Central Asian republics, or at the very least extract a commitment from Washington to withdraw from these bases as soon as the immediate military purpose had passed.
During the Iraq crisis of 2003, Putin opposed Washington's move to invade Iraq without the benefit of a United Nations Security Council resolution explicitly authorizing the use of military force. After the official end of the war was announced, American president George W. Bush asked the United Nations to lift sanctions on Iraq. Putin supported lifting of the sanctions in due course, arguing that the UN commission first be given a chance to complete its work on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
In 2005, Putin and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder negotiated the construction of a major oil pipeline over the Baltic exclusively between Russia and Germany. Schroder also attended Putin's 53rd birthday in Saint Petersburg the same year.
Putin was married to Lyudmila Putina, a former airline stewardess and teacher of German, who was born in Kaliningrad, (formerly Konigsberg). They have two daughters, Maria (born 1985) and Yekaterina (Katya) (born 1986 in Dresden). The daughters attended the German School in Moscow (Deutsche Schule Moskau) until his appointment as prime minister.
Putin is a practicing member of the Russian Orthodox Church. His conversion, which most observers agree was sincere, followed a life-threatening fire at his dacha in the early 1990s. Very unusual for communist Russia, his mother had been a regular church-goer. His father was a communist and atheist (although he seems not to have objected to his wife's beliefs).
Putin speaks German with near-native fluency, and has passable English.

Aleksandr Pushkin

Aleksandr Pushkin (06.06.1799 - 10.02.1837) - Russian poet.

Aleksandr Pushkin photoPushkin's father came of an old boyar family; his mother was a granddaughter of Abram Hannibal, who, according to family tradition, was an Abyssinian princeling bought as a slave at Constantinople (Istanbul) and adopted by Peter the Great, whose comrade in arms he became. Pushkin immortalized him in an unfinished historical novel, Arap Petra Velikogo (1827; The Negro of Peter the Great). Like many aristocratic families in early 19th-century Russia, Pushkin's parents adopted French culture, and he and his brother and sister learned to talk and to read in French. They were left much to the care of their maternal grandmother, who told Aleksandr, especially, stories of his ancestors in Russian. From Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva, his old nurse, a freed serf (immortalized as Tatyana's nurse in Yevgeny Onegin), he heard Russian folktales. During summers at his grandmother's estate near Moscow he talked to the peasants and spent hours alone, living in the dream world of a precocious, imaginative child. He read widely in his father's library and gained stimulus from the literary guests who came to the house.
In 1811 Pushkin entered the newly founded Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo (later renamed Pushkin) and while there began his literary career with the publication (1814, in Vestnik Evropy, "The Messenger of Europe") of his verse epistle "To My Friend, the Poet." In his early verse, he followed the style of his older contemporaries, the Romantic poets K.N. Batyushkov and V.A. Zhukovsky, and of the French 17th- and 18th-century poets, especially the Vicomte de Parny.
While at the Lyceum he also began his first completed major work, the romantic poem Ruslan i Lyudmila (1820; Ruslan and Ludmila), written in the style of the narrative poems of Ludovico Ariosto and Voltaire but with an old Russian setting and making use of Russian folklore. Ruslan, modeled on the traditional Russian epic hero, encounters various adventures before rescuing his bride, Ludmila, daughter of Vladimir, grand prince of Kiev, who, on her wedding night, has been kidnapped by the evil magician Chernomor. The poem flouted accepted rules and genres and was violently attacked by both of the established literary schools of the day, Classicism and Sentimentalism. It brought Pushkin fame, however, and Zhukovsky presented his portrait to the poet with the inscription "To the victorious pupil from the defeated master."
In 1817 Pushkin accepted a post in the foreign office at St. Petersburg, where he was elected to Arzamбs, an exclusive literary circle founded by his uncle's friends. Pushkin also joined the Green Lamp association, which, though founded (in 1818) for discussion of literature and history, became a clandestine branch of a secret society, the Union of Welfare. In his political verses and epigrams, widely circulated in manuscript, he made himself the spokesman for the ideas and aspirations of those who were to take part in the Decembrist rising of 1825, the unsuccessful culmination of a Russian revolutionary movement in its earliest stage.
For these political poems, Pushkin was banished from St. Petersburg in May 1820 to a remote southern province. Sent first to Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine), he was there taken ill and, while convalescing, traveled in the northern Caucasus and later to the Crimea with General Rayevski, a hero of 1812, and his family. The impressions he gained provided material for his "southern cycle" of romantic narrative poems: Kavkazsky plennik (1820-21; The Prisoner of the Caucasus), Bratya razboyniki (1821-22; The Robber Brothers), and Bakhchisaraysky fontan (1823; The Fountain of Bakhchisaray).
Although this cycle of poems confirmed the reputation of the author of Ruslan and Ludmila and Pushkin was hailed as the leading Russian poet of the day and as the leader of the romantic, liberty-loving generation of the 1820s, he himself was not satisfied with it. In May 1823 he started work on his central masterpiece, the novel in verse Yevgeny Onegin (1833), on which he continued to work intermittently until 1831. In it he returned to the idea of presenting a typical figure of his own age but in a wider setting and by means of new artistic methods and techniques.
Yevgeny Onegin unfolds a panoramic picture of Russian life. The characters it depicts and immortalizes--Onegin, the disenchanted skeptic; Lensky, the romantic, freedom-loving poet; and Tatyana, the heroine, a profoundly affectionate study of Russian womanhood: a "precious ideal," in the poet's own words--are typically Russian and are shown in relationship to the social and environmental forces by which they are molded. Although formally the work resembles Lord Byron's Don Juan, Pushkin rejects Byron's subjective, romanticized treatment in favour of objective description and shows his hero not in exotic surroundings but at the heart of a Russian way of life. Thus, the action begins at St. Petersburg, continues on a provincial estate, then switches to Moscow, and finally returns to St. Petersburg.
Pushkin had meanwhile been transferred first to Kishinyov (1820-23; now Chisinau, Moldova) and then to Odessa (1823-24). His bitterness at continued exile is expressed in letters to his friends--the first of a collection of correspondence that became an outstanding and enduring monument of Russian prose. At Kishinyov, a remote outpost in Moldavia, he devoted much time to writing, though he also plunged into the life of a society engaged in amorous intrigue, hard drinking, gaming, and violence. At Odessa he fell passionately in love with the wife of his superior, Count Vorontsov, governor-general of the province. He fought several duels, and eventually the count asked for his discharge. Pushkin, in a letter to a friend intercepted by the police, had stated that he was now taking "lessons in pure atheism." This finally led to his being again exiled to his mother's estate of Mikhaylovskoye, near Pskov, at the other end of Russia.
Although the two years at Mikhaylovskoye were unhappy for Pushkin, they were to prove one of his most productive periods. Alone and isolated, he embarked on a close study of Russian history; he came to know the peasants on the estate and interested himself in noting folktales and songs. During this period the specifically Russian features of his poetry became steadily more marked. His ballad "Zhenikh" (1825; "The Bridegroom"), for instance, is based on motifs from Russian folklore; and its simple, swift-moving style, quite different from the brilliant extravagance of Ruslan and Ludmila or the romantic, melodious music of the "southern" poems, emphasizes its stark tragedy.
In 1824 he published Tsygany (The Gypsies), begun earlier as part of the "southern cycle." At Mikhaylovskoye, too, he wrote the provincial chapters of Yevgeny Onegin; the poem Graf Nulin (1827; "Count Nulin"), based on the life of the rural gentry; and, finally, one of his major works, the historical tragedy Boris Godunov (1831).
The latter marks a break with the Neoclassicism of the French theatre and is constructed on the "folk-principles" of William Shakespeare's plays, especially the histories and tragedies, plays written "for the people" in the widest sense and thus universal in their appeal. Written just before the Decembrist rising, it treats the burning question of the relations between the ruling classes, headed by the tsar, and the masses; it is the moral and political significance of the latter, "the judgment of the people," that Pushkin emphasizes. Set in Russia in a period of political and social chaos on the brink of the 17th century, its theme is the tragic guilt and inexorable fate of a great hero--Boris Godunov, son-in-law of Malyuta Skuratov, a favourite of Ivan the Terrible, and here presented as the murderer of Ivan's little son, Dmitri. The development of the action on two planes, one political and historical, the other psychological, is masterly and is set against a background of turbulent events and ruthless ambitions. The play owes much to Pushkin's reading of early Russian annals and chronicles, as well as to Shakespeare, who, as Pushkin said, was his master in bold, free treatment of character, simplicity, and truth to nature. Although lacking the heightened, poetic passion of Shakespeare's tragedies, Boris excels in the "convincingness of situation and naturalness of dialogue" at which Pushkin aimed, sometimes using conversational prose, sometimes a five-foot iambic line of great flexibility. The character of the pretender, the false Dmitri, is subtly and sympathetically drawn; and the power of the people, who eventually bring him to the throne, is so greatly emphasized that the play's publication was delayed by censorship. Pushkin's ability to create psychological and dramatic unity, despite the episodic construction, and to heighten the dramatic tension by economy of language, detail, and characterization make this outstanding play a revolutionary event in the history of Russian drama.
After the suppression of the Decembrist uprising of 1825, the new tsar Nicholas I, aware of Pushkin's immense popularity and knowing that he had taken no part in the Decembrist "conspiracy," allowed him to return to Moscow in the autumn of 1826. During a long conversation between them, the tsar met the poet's complaints about censorship with a promise that in the future he himself would be Pushkin's censor and told him of his plans to introduce several pressing reforms from above and, in particular, to prepare the way for liberation of the serfs. The collapse of the rising had been a grievous experience for Pushkin, whose heart was wholly with the "guilty" Decembrists, five of whom had been executed, while others were exiled to forced labour in Siberia.
Pushkin saw, however, that without the support of the people, the struggle against autocracy was doomed. He considered that the only possible way of achieving essential reforms was from above, "on the tsar's initiative," as he had written in "Derevnya." This is the reason for his persistent interest in the age of reforms at the beginning of the 18th century and in the figure of Peter the Great, the "tsar-educator," whose example he held up to the present tsar in the poem "Stansy" (1826; "Stanzas"), in The Negro of Peter the Great, in the historical poem Poltava (1829), and in the poem Medny vsadnik (1837; The Bronze Horseman).
In The Bronze Horseman, Pushkin poses the problem of the "little man" whose happiness is destroyed by the great leader in pursuit of ambition. He does this by telling a "story of St. Petersburg" set against the background of the flood of 1824, when the river took its revenge against Peter I's achievement in building the city. The poem describes how the "little hero," Yevgeny, driven mad by the drowning of his sweetheart, wanders through the streets. Seeing the bronze statue of Peter I seated on a rearing horse and realizing that the tsar, seen triumphing over the waves, is the cause of his grief, Yevgeny threatens him and, in a climax of growing horror, is pursued through the streets by the "Bronze Horseman." The poem's descriptive and emotional powers give it an unforgettable impact and make it one of the greatest in Russian literature.
After returning from exile, Pushkin found himself in an awkward and invidious position. The tsar's censorship proved to be even more exacting than that of the official censors, and his personal freedom was curtailed. Not only was he put under secret observation by the police but he was openly supervised by its chief, Count Benckendorf. Moreover, his works of this period met with little comprehension from the critics, and even some of his friends accused him of apostasy, forcing him to justify his political position in the poem "Druzyam" (1828; "To My Friends"). The anguish of his spiritual isolation at this time is reflected in a cycle of poems about the poet and the mob (1827-30) and in the unfinished Yegipetskiye nochi (1835; Egyptian Nights).
Yet it was during this period that Pushkin's genius came to its fullest flowering. His art acquired new dimensions, and almost every one of the works written between 1829 and 1836 opened a new chapter in the history of Russian literature. He spent the autumn of 1830 at his family's Nizhny Novgorod estate, Boldino, and these months are the most remarkable in the whole of his artistic career. During them he wrote the four so-called "little tragedies"--Skupoy rytsar (1836; The Covetous Knight), Motsart i Salyeri (1831; Mozart and Salieri), Kamenny gost (1839; The Stone Guest), and Pir vo vremya chumy (1832; Feast in Time of the Plague)--the five short prose tales collected as Povesti pokoynogo Ivana Petrovicha Belkina (1831; Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin); the comic poem of everyday lower-class life Domik v Kolomne (1833; "A Small House in Kolomna"); and many lyrics in widely differing styles, as well as several critical and polemical articles, rough drafts, and sketches.
Among Pushkin's most characteristic features were his wide knowledge of world literature, as seen in his interest in such English writers as William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and the Lake poets; his "universal sensibility"; and his ability to re-create the spirit of different races at different historical epochs without ever losing his own individuality. This is particularly marked in the "little tragedies," which are concerned with an analysis of the "evil passions" and, like the short story Pikovaya Dama (1834; The Queen of Spades), exerted a direct influence on the subject matter and techniques of the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
In 1831 Pushkin married Natalya Nikolayevna Goncharova and settled in St. Petersburg. Once more he took up government service and was commissioned to write a history of Peter the Great. Three years later he received the rank of Kammerjunker (gentleman of the emperor's bedchamber), partly because the tsar wished Natalya to have the entrйe to court functions. The social life at court, which he was now obliged to lead and which his wife enjoyed, was ill-suited to creative work, but he stubbornly continued to write. Without abandoning poetry altogether, he turned increasingly to prose. Alongside the theme of Peter the Great, the motif of a popular peasant rising acquired growing importance in his work, as is shown by the unfinished satirical Istoriya sela Goryukhina (1837; The History of the Village of Goryukhino), the unfinished novel Dubrovsky (1841), Stseny iz rytsarskikh vremen (1837; Scenes from the Age of Chivalry), and finally, the most important of his prose works, the historical novel of the Pugachov Rebellion, Kapitanskaya dochka (1836; The Captain's Daughter), which had been preceded by a historical study of the rebellion, Istoriya Pugachova (1834; "A History of Pugachov").
Meanwhile, both in his domestic affairs and in his official duties, his life was becoming more intolerable. In court circles he was regarded with mounting suspicion and resentment, and his repeated petitions to be allowed to resign his post, retire to the country, and devote himself entirely to literature were all rejected. Finally, in 1837, Pushkin was mortally wounded defending his wife's honour in a duel forced on him by influential enemies.
Pushkin's use of the Russian language is astonishing in its simplicity and profundity and formed the basis of the style of novelists Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, and Leo Tolstoy. His novel in verse, Yevgeny Onegin, was the first Russian work to take contemporary society as its subject and pointed the way to the Russian realistic novel of the mid-19th century. Even during his lifetime Pushkin's importance as a great national poet had been recognized by Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol, his successor and pupil, and it was his younger contemporary, the great Russian critic Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky, who produced the fullest and deepest critical study of Pushkin's work, which still retains much of its relevance. To the later classical writers of the 19th century, Pushkin, the creator of the Russian literary language, stood as the cornerstone of Russian literature, in Maksim Gorky's words, "the beginning of beginnings." Pushkin has thus become an inseparable part of the literary world of the Russian people. He also exerted a profound influence on other aspects of Russian culture, most notably in opera.
Pushkin's work--with its nobility of conception and its emphasis on civic responsibility (shown in his command to the poet-prophet to "fire the hearts of men with his words"), its life-affirming vigour, and its confidence in the triumph of reason over prejudice, of human charity over slavery and oppression--has struck an echo all over the world. Translated into all the major languages, his works are regarded both as expressing most completely Russian national consciousness and as transcending national barriers.

Grigory Rasputin

Grigory Rasputin (22.01. [O.S. 10.01.] 1869 - 29.12. [O.S. 16.12.] 1916) - Russian Orthodox Christian and mystic.

Grigory Efimovich, later known as Rasputin, was born into a peasant family on January 10, 1869 (old calendar) at Pokrovskoye, a village located in the province of Tobolsk, Siberia.
Rasputin received no formal education and lived as a peasant. His marriage to Praskovia Federovna, celebrated in 1895, was followed by the birth of several children. In the early 1900s, Rasputin's commitment to his family waned in relation to the interest he now took in religion. He may even have adopted the views of the outlawed "Khylysy" sect which sought salvation through repentance and seems to have involved the commission of acts of sensual licence for which repentance was necessary.
He acquired a local reputation as a starets, or holy man, and his subsequent wanderings took him far outside Russia - as far indeed as the Athos Peninsula on the coasts of Greece and even as far as Jerusalem.
In 1905, during a visit to Saint Petersburg, then the site of the national capital, Rasputin met a theologian who was the head of a religious Academy and confessor to the Empress. He was presented at court through the patronage of high church officials and of a group of ladies who were influential at court. The Russian royal family had had a tradition of giving attention to holy men in order to seek their intervention in many ways including that of attempting to secure the birth of a male heir to the Russian throne.
Czar Nicholas noted the occasion in his diary on November 14, 1905: "We have come to know a man of God, Gregory, from the province of Tobolsk." Some time thereafter Nicholas entrusted him with the office of imperial lampkeeper -- he was to tend the numerous lamps burning continuously before the highly valued palace icons at Tsarskoe Selo, a principal royal palace located close to Saint Petersburg. Rasputin made a deep impression on the Czarina (Empress) Alexandra Fyodorovna. He seemed, on several occasions, to be miraculously able to relieve the suffering of the dangerously, (life-threateningly so!!!), haemophiliac heir to the Russian throne, Alexis Nikolayevich, leading to his eventually becoming the most influential person in the imperial entourage.
Rasputin's influence was increasingly felt in Russian society, in the appointment of Bishops, even in politics. After 1911 many high government offices were filled by his appointees, most of whom were incompetent. World War I irrupted in 1914 and, in this conflict, the armies of the Russian Empire were deployed in opposition to those of the German and Austrian "Central Powers." When Emperor Nicholas II went to the front to take personal command in the autumn of 1915 Rasputin became the decisive influence in the government, advising Alexandra on the conduct of internal affairs.
The armies of Russia did not fare well in the wars, the despair of the people arising out of hunger and disease as well as an appalling casualty rate led to murmerings against the Czarina as a "German woman" and against Rasputin "The Dissolute" her sinister advisor who was held to have indulged in many scandalous relationships with the ladies of the court and even with the Czarina herself. Rumors circulated that Rasputin was actually conspiring with the Central Powers to bring about a Russian defeat - he had become an object of popular hatred. In mid December, 1916, a group of aristocrats of the highest social position, including a nephew and the favourite cousin of the Tsar, invited the "mad monk" Rasputin to  a "supper" at the Yussupoff palace. These aristocrats did not really intend to entertain their guest but rather were planning to bring about his death.
The Czarina and Czar were outraged at the murder of their favourite. The Czarina had his mortal remains interred in the grounds of Tsarskoe Selo - she prayed regularly in a special chapel she had built nearby.
Rasputin's influence over the royal family was partly responsible for the rising tide of discontent that led to the downfall of the monarchy in the serious domestic upheavals that culminated in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts (born 28.10.1967) - American actress.

When Julia Roberts won the 2001 Best Actress Oscar for her performance as self-made lawyer and Woman Of The People Erin Brokovich, the award seemed to reflect a popular acceptance that she had finally arrived as a "serious" actress. Due to the outrageous success of Pretty Woman, eleven years before, people had considered her to be most at home being charming in romantic comedies (and, by God, was she charming). For long periods her love life was scrutinised more avidly than her films. And then there were the ever-increasing wage-packets that saw her not only as Hollywood's most sought-after female headliner but also a major rival to the likes of Cruise, Gibson and Schwarzenegger. Throughout the Nineties, for all her efforts to widen her scope, she was seen primarily as a movie star, hardly as an actress at all. It was forgotten that actually, as the doomed Shelby in Steel Magnolias, she'd been Oscar-nominated for a dramatic role before the Pretty Woman explosion blinded us all.
She was born Julie Fiona Roberts in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 28, 1967, into a very large extended family of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish extraction (Roberts legend has it that some Cherokee also crept into the gene pool at some point). Her father, Walter, was a genuine outsider, not sharing the conservative, macho values of his farming-stock family. Instead, he was artistic and sensitive, wearing tight clothes with a European cut, even daring to become a drama student. Having joined the air force to take advantage of the recent GI Bill that gave a free education to those in the armed forces, he wound up at the Keesler base at Biloxi, Mississippi. Here, in 1955 auditioning for a stage production of George Washington Slept Here, he won both a role and the heart of the play's vivacious blonde ingenue, Betty Lou Bredemus.
Betty Lou, born in Minneapolis and partly of Swedish blood, had studied drama and worked in stock companies before, like Walter, making use of the GI Bill. She and Walter would marry and move back to Atlanta, where they'd have three kids - Eric, Lisa and Julie. They'd also establish and run a children's theatre at their home and, being amongst the first whites to defy Georgia's colour lines, their pupils would include the children of Martin Luther King. It's rumoured that, given the theatre was not profitable, the Kings not only sponsored it but actually paid the costs of young Julie's birth at the Crawford Long Hospital. Sadly, she would never speak to the great peacemaker, who was assassinated in Memphis before she was 6 months old.
Julie's first years were spent in a 2-storey house in middle-class midtown Atlanta. Here, she'd watch the theatre workshops while Eric and Lisa would join in (she'd later claim the only acting advice she got from her father was "Don't ever say anything unless it means something"). Unfortunately, the financial situation exerted so much pressure on Walter and Betty Lou that their marriage began to crack. Usually charming and charismatic, he became occasionally abusive. She, in turn, was not faithful. They'd split when Julie was just 4. Walter would remain in Atlanta with Eric (then 16), taking a job selling vacuum cleaners in a department store to make ends meet. Betty Lou would move with the girls to Smyrna, a suburb just out of town to the north-west. Here Betty would become a church secretary, then a real estate agent, quickly getting married to Michael Motes (in 1976, the union would provide Julie with a half-sister, Nancy).

Joanne Rowling

Joanne Rowling (31.07.1965) - English writer.

Joanne Rowling (pen-name J. K. Rowling) is a famous British novelist. Her fantasy books about Harry Potter brought her world recognition and popularity. They became the best-selling books in the history of literature. These books have become the basis for a series of films, which were also highly successful. The writer was born on July 31st, 1965, in Yate, which is north-east of Bristol. Her father was an engineer and her mother was a science technician. When Joanne was four, her family moved to Winterbourne. She attended St Michael’s Primary School there. Many biographers believe that the headmaster of that school became the prototype of the headmaster of the fictional school of magic in “Harry Potter”.
She started writing fictional stories rather early, at the age of nine. Her first listener was her younger sister Dianne. Joanne became genuinely interested in literature after she got Jessica Mitford’s autobiography. This author became her idol and she wanted to be like her. Joanne’s childhood wasn’t easy. Her mother was often ill and she had to take care of herself and her sister. School years were also difficult. During one interview she confessed that this was a terrible time for her. In 1982, she failed the exams to Oxford. Nevertheless, she managed to enter the Exeter University. In 1986, she moved to London and started working as a secretary at the research department. Later, she met her boyfriend and moved to Manchester with him. The intention to write a fiction about a magical school came to her unexpectedly.
Soon, her mother died and it had a great influence on her novel. She described in details what Harry felt after the loss of his parents in her first book. In 1991, she went to Portugal to teach English. She was convinced that this job is for her. Every morning and evening she had free time to write the novel, in the afternoons she was teaching. In Portugal she met her future husband, who was a journalist. In 1993, she had a daughter Jessica. However, her marriage didn’t last. She soon got divorced and moved to Edinburgh with her daughter. In Scotland she received a grant to finish the novel about “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. It wasn’t easy to sell it at first. Finally the book was bought by “Bloomsbury” publishing office.
A few months later the rights to her book were bought by one US publishing house, which made her a generous offer. As an author she got a sufficient amount of money, so that she could quit teaching. The book soon received a number of awards. The sequel of Joanne’s story was released next year. The writer quickly achieved world recognition and became an international literary sensation. All in all, she wrote seven books about Harry Potter. Apart from that, she created a number of novels which are somehow connected with the Hogwarts magical world.

Walter Scott

Walter Scott (15.08.1771 - 21.09.1832) - British writer.

Walter Scott was a famous British writer, poet, historian and the founder of historical novel. During his life he combined writing with being a legal administrator and a member of Tory fraction. He was born in Scotland, on August 15th, 1771. His family was rather rich and noble. His father was a successful lawyer and his mother was the daughter of a professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He was the ninth child in the family. When he was little, he had polio, which left him lame. This condition had a significant effect on his further life and writing.
As a child, he spent lots of time at his grandfather’s farm at Sandyknowe, which was close to Scottish Borders. Despite his poor health, he was an active boy with lively mind and phenomenal memory. Starting from 1779 he studied at the Royal High School. Prior to that, he received private education. At the age of 14, he entered the Edinburgh College, where he became popular among the peers for his excellent storytelling. As a student, he got interested in mountaineering. This activity helped him to become physically fit and healthier. At his free time he liked reading books, including the works of ancient authors.
He was fond of novels, poetry, ballads and legends of Scotland. For that reason, together with his peers he organized a poetic society. In 1792, he passed the most important exam in his life and became a lawyer. Since then he practiced law and became a respectable man in Edinburgh. It was then that he visited the Scottish Highlands for the first time and was highly impressed. He started his literature career in 1796. Soon, he published a three-volume set of collected ballads. His narrative poem “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” (1805) became was very popular not only in Scotland, but in England. Writing his first novel “Waverley” (1814), he preferred to hide his real name and did so for the subsequent 10 years.
In 1820, the writer was awarded the title of a baronet. During the 1820s and 1830s he wrote many other outstanding novels, including “Ivanhoe”, “Quentin Durward”, “Count Robert of Paris”. At the same time he was leading a series of historical studies. In 1829-1830, he published the two volumes of “History of Scotland”. The art of writing has brought Walter Scott financial independence and fame. However, at some point of his life he was trapped in debts and had to work day and night to pay them. He worked at the limit of his intellectual and physical abilities. In 1830, he suffered a stroke, which left his right hand paralyzed. It was followed by another two strokes and the writer died of a heart attack in September, 1832.

Will Smith

Will Smith (born 25.09.1968) - American actor.

Born Willard Christopher Smith Jr on September 25th, 1968, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Smith grew up amidst the middle-classes, his father owning a refrigeration company. The second of four children (the younger Harry and Ellen are twins), Will was a bright child, constantly playing upon his natural charm, a habit which, at Overbrook High School, earned him the nickname Prince.
Influenced both by Eddie Murphy and new hip-hop heroes like Grandmaster Flash, Will began rapping at the age of 12, quickly developing his own slick, semi-comic style. Then, at age 16, he met the man with whom he would score his first worldwide success. At a party in Philadelphia, he cracked a joke that fell flat with everyone. Everyone, that is, except DJ Jazzy Jeff - real name Jeff Townes - who had himself been working at music since the age of 10. The pair became firm friends and began to collaborate, Jeff as DJ, Will as rapper (having expanded his nickname to Fresh Prince). So vigorous was their pursuit of musical excellence that Will even turned down a scholarship to Boston's super-prestigious MIT in order to follow his dream.
The pair's music was quirky, cheery and squeaky clean, a far cry from the new Gangsta Rap that was beginning to rear its bloodied head, and mainstream success was near-immediate. Their first single, Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble (sampling the theme to I Dream Of Jeannie) was a hit in 1986, boosting the sales of their debut album Rock The House and making Will a millionaire at the age of 18. More hits followed, including the album He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper, the first hip-hop LP to go double-platinum. In 1989, they won the first ever Grammy for Best Rap Performance for the track Parents Just Don't Understand, and received the three millionth call to their own 900 number (the US equivalent of 0898), the first ever set up by pop stars. A further Grammy was won in 1991, for the track Summertime, and the hits kept coming till Code Red, their final album together, in 1993. This, of course, was not the end of Will's rapping career. He would re-emerge in 1997 with a debut solo LP, Big Willie Style, which spawned the enormo-hit Gettin' Jiggy Wit It, and would strike again with 1999's mighty Willennium.
But by this time Will was already at the top of another profession. Back in the late Eighties, he'd met one Benny Medina, who had an idea for a sitcom concerning his experiences in Beverly Hills. NBC took up the option and, casting Will as a sassy, street-smart kid coping comically with life in Los Angeles' richest area, produced a series titled The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. The show, a major success, ran for six years, and gave Will a foot-hold in Hollywood, with movie offers soon coming thick and fast.
First came the bleak and melodramatic Where The Day Takes You, about young runaways in Hollywood, with Will way down a cast including Dermot Mulroney, Lara Flynn Boyle and Kyle MacLachlan. Then came a bigger role in Made In America, starring Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson, where Will performed a superb comic turn as Teacake, best friend to Goldberg's onscreen daughter Nia Long (also Will's girlfriend in Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air). Critics were mightily impressed by his first dramatic lead, as a manipulative imposter in John Guare's Oscar-nominated Six Degrees Of Separation, then the public came on board with Bad Boys. One of the first modern, high-budget action thrillers to feature two black leads, this paired Will with fellow comic Martin Lawrence and took the box-office by storm. Will was now big business.
This he proved in his next feature, the sprawling, explosive Independence Day. As Marine Corps Captain Steve Hiller (a character he based on childhood hero Harrison Ford's Han Solo), he made the very best of limited dialogue, and stole the show by punching out a grotesque, murderous alien then delivering a deadpan "Welcome to Earth". For a while, he could do no wrong. With Tommy Lee Jones as his straight-man, he scored an spectacular cross-generational hit with Men In Black, then starred in the superior conspiracy thriller Enemy Of The State. Next came his one major set-back, with the relative failure of Wild Wild West. Despite the popularity of the Smith-rapped theme tune, the public did not take to the movie's bizarre combination of buccaneering cowboy action and gothic science fiction. Maybe if George Clooney had not pulled out of the role taken by Kevin Kline things might have been different.
But Will pressed on, undeterred, charting high again in America as the mystical caddie helping Matt Damon re-find his golf game in Robert Redford's The Legend Of Bagger Vance. Then came Will's greatest challenge yet - Michael Mann's bio-pic Ali. He actually turned the role down eight times, believing no one could successfully replicate Muhammad Ali's skill and charisma. Only a personal call from the great man himself could change his mind. Once in, he was really in. He trained like a demon, gaining the approval of both Sugar Ray Leonard, and his own wife. "I'm human viagra," Smith said of his newfound vitality, "I'm Willagra. I'm a sex machine now. I'm raring to go every second of the day. My wife's loving it". His involvement in the movie wasn't purely as an actor either. With finance hard to come by, both Smith and Mann put up their fees to meet costs that eventually spiralled above the $105 million budget. Released on Christmas Day, 2001, Ali made $10.2 million in its first 24 hours, a record for a film opening on December 25th. but still only took $58 million. Nevertheless, for his stunning performance in the most challenging of roles, Will found himself Oscar-nominated, as was Jon Voight, earlier his co-star in Enemy Of The State.
Following this came the much-anticipated Men In Black 2 where, with the world threatened once again, Will sought out mentor and retired agent Tommy Lee Jones, now a post office worker, and attempted to give him back his memories so they could re-enter the alien-butt-kicking fray together. The movie also reteamed Will with Lara Flynn Boyle, star of his screen debut, who played the sulky, scary alien-queen who kidnapped the entire MIB staff. During production, a degree of rewriting took place due to the September 11th tragedy - initially Smith and Jones were supposed to wind up battling a giant alien worm on top of the World Trade Centre.
Now, to the great joy of Martin Lawrence, came Bad Boys 2, like the original directed by Michael Bay. This time Smith and Lawrence (with Will now seeing Martin's onscreen cop sister) were on the trail of a drug dealer shifting his money between Florida and Cuba. Once again they were a hugely charismatic comedic duo, but this time they were rather overshadowed by stunt overkill, the high-speed action being too sharply edited to create any real tension or excitement. Like MIB2 it went into profit but, again like MIB2, the margin was much smaller than that of the original.
Will moved on to I, Robot, an adaptation of Isaac Asimov sci-fi stories, directed by Alex Proyas. This saw him in 2035 as a technophobic Chicago cop who's called in to investigate when a robot kills a human at the giant US Robotics corporation. Thing is, robots cannot kill humans, they're not able to, it's one of the Laws of Robotics. So are they thinking for themselves, are they taking over the world - Jesus, have they taken it over already? Teaming up with robot psychologist Bridget Moynahan, Will aims to find out.
Next he would lend his voice to the animated Shark Tale, playing a young fish who's found beside the body of the son of shark mob boss. Robert De Niro. Heralded as a hard-man killer, he boasts and brags and finds himself pursued by vampish Angelina Jolie and a vengeful De Niro. It was another huge hit, as was Hitch (originally known as The Last First Kiss), a rom-com released in time for Valentine's Day, 2005. Here Will played a professional dating consultant who counsels lonely guys seeking dates in New York City. Setting pudgy accountant Kevin James up with wealthy power-babe Amber Valetta, he then discovers that his methods don't work for their inventor as he struggles to impose himself on gossip columnist Eva Mendes. Interestingly, Hitch would also see Smith enter the Guiness Book Of Records when he appeared at three premieres in 12 hours, at Manchester, Birmingham and London.
Will Smith has been twice married: first to Sheree Zampino (1992-95), who he met in 1991 at a taping of A Different World, and with whom he had one child, Willard Smith III. Then there was actress Jada Pinkett (1997-now) with whom he has a son, Jaden Christopher Syre, and a daughter, Willow Camille Reign. He actually met Pinkett many years before they married, when she tried out for the part of his girlfriend in Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air (the part going, as mentioned, to Nia Long). Come 2003, he and Jada would create and write a TV show, All Of Us, based on their own lives. Both would make occasional guest appearances.
Having received $5 million for Men In Black, $14 million for Enemy Of The State, and an amazing 20 million (plus a percentage of gross profits) for Ali, MIB2 and Bad Boys 2, Smith is one of Hollywood's prime earners. Deservedly so when you consider his movies' box office takings ($144 million for I, Robot, $160 million for Shark Tale and $122 million for Hitch in juts three weeks). He's also busied himself as a producer, having set up his own production company, Overbrook Entertainment with partner James Lassiter. The company is said to be working on a remake of Clint Eastwood's infamous stalker-flick Play Misty For Me. Then there's his Treybell Development company, which deals in building projects in Philadelphia. But not everything has been golden for this golden boy. It could have been considered a mistake to turn down the role of Neo in The Matrix and the lead in Phone Booth. It was certainly unfortunate when, in the summer of 2003, the relative failure of Will's third album and his Greatest Hits led to him being dropped by Columbia Records.
But he'd already been there and done that. Having conquered the worlds of music and film, you'd think Will Smith would have no ambitions left, that there was no mountain left to climb. But, being Will Smith, he says the biggest is yet to come. In ten years or so, he plans to run for President. He said it, then he denied it. It just has to be true. Only a crazy man would bet against him.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (11.12.1918 - 03.08.2008) - Russian writer.

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born on 11 December 1918 in Kislovodsk (present-day Stavropol Krai, Russia). His father Isaakiy Solzhenitsyn was an officer in the Imperial Russian Army. Aleksandr’s mother, Taisiya, was Ukrainian. She studied in Moscow and met Isaakiy there, who subsequently became her husband.
In 1918 when Taisiya was pregnant her husband died. As a result Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was brought up by his mother and aunt. Taisiya tried to develop literary and scientific learnings of her son. Solzhenitsyn’s childhood coincided with the Russian Civil War. His mother never remarried and died in 1944.
In 1924 the family moved to Rostov-on-Don. In 1936 Solzhenitsyn finished school and entered Rostov State University the same year. While there in 1940 he married Natalia Alekseevna Reshetovskaya, but after a year he went to the army. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn served in the Red army during the Second World War.
During the war Solzhenitsyn corresponded with his friend Nikolai Vitkevich and the letters contained negative comments about Joseph Stalin. Consequently in 1945 Solzhenitsyn was arrested. In 1953 he was sent to internal exile for life at Kok-Terek (Kazakhstan). In 1954 Solzhenitsyn’s health became worse and he was treated in Tashkent. In 1956 he was released.
Solzhenitsyn began his literary career as an author of different short stories but his best-known works are The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his works Solzhenitsyn substantially raised social and political issues.
In 1972 Solzhenitsyn divorced with his first wife and married for a second time to Natalia Dmitrievna Svetlova with whom he had three sons.
In February 1974 the writer was taken into custody and deported from the Soviet Union to Germany. He was announced to be the parricide. Then he moved to Zurich, Switzerland and made a tour of Western Europe, the USA and Canada. In 1976 Solzhenitsyn moved to the USA.
In 1994 Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. From that time he lived with his wife in Moscow. All his sons became U.S. citizens.
Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure near Moscow on 3 August 2008, at the age of 89.

George Soros

George Soros (born 12.08.1930) - American businessman.

George Soros is a Hungarian born billionaire investor, philanthropist and author. The American businessman was once known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" after speculating on the Pound Sterling, believing it was overvalued. Soros earned himself 1.1billion US dollars from the deal in 1992. George Soros is also a generous philanthropist, giving away millions of dollars every year to the poor and disadvantaged of the world. He also has numerous critics in both finance and politics.
George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary on August 12, 1930. In 1947 Soros fled the Soviet Union Communist occupation of Hungary and arrived in England. He then went on to study at the London School of Economics and graduated in 1952. Soros then emigrated and settled in in the United States of America in 1956.
Upon moving to America, Soros set up an investment fund that went on to create his massive fortune. It was his intention to simply support his love of writing from his Wall Street earnings, but his well timed investment decisions saw his wealth increase dramatically each year. The Quantum Fund , went on to become one of the most successful managed investment funds ever, with a more than 30% increase annually over a 30 year period.
Soros also gained many critics along his path to financial success. Through his International currency speculating he was once given the nickname of "the man who broke the bank of England" from a deal that earned him more than one billion US dollars. He has also been accused of negatively affecting the Malaysian ringgit during the Asian financial crisis through his aggressive currency speculation.
George Soros is also a very active philanthropist that is willing to use his money to fund causes that he believes in. Since 1979 he has been supporting and funding various organizations and activities world wide. His first charitable actions helped to fund black students in the University of Capetown in South Africa during apartheid. Soros is founder and chairman of the Open Society Institute, an organization that supports activities in more than 50 countries worldwide.
George Soros is also the author of several books on the economy and politics. He first entered the business world to fund his passion for writing and philosophy, and continues to fulfill this passion with more than 8 published books.
During the 2004 American election year, Soros has risen to fame with his criticism of George W Bush. Although not usually known for his participation in politics, Soros believes that the direction the Bush government has been taking America is dangerously wrong. He has contributed more than 15 million dollars to oust President Bush. Soros commented that "it is the central focus of my life" and "it is a matter of life and death".

Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg (born 18.12.1946) - American film director, screenwriter and producer.

In the fickle world of cinema, there are very few names you can splash across a billboard to ensure a film's financial success. Harrison Ford, perhaps, or Julia Roberts. George Lucas, if it's a Star Wars movie. Tom Cruise seemed a cert till Eyes Wide Shut. These names will probably make you millions, but there's only one sure-fire guarantee - Steven Spielberg. As a director, he's the most successful of all time. His films have been so popular, so consistently entertaining, that people rush to see anything tagged as A Steven Spielberg Production, even movies he merely financed. No one else has muscle like that. No one else ever has.
As a film-maker, he started early. He was born Steven Allan Spielberg on the 18th of December, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father, Arnold, was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers, while mother Leah, a concert pianist, looked after the four children - Steven was the oldest, the others being Annie, Sue and Nancy. The family soon moved to Scottsdale, Arizona - Steven would attend Arcadia High School in Phoenix - and it was here that his love for movies (and his financial acumen) began to blossom. Perhaps unnaturally quickly, if reports that Spielberg suffered from Asperger's Syndrome are to be believed. This is a mild form of autism that leads to obsessional interests - often with very positive results.
Leah being as indulgent as Arnold was emotionally remote (many fathers in Spielberg movies are either missing or distant), Steven's interest in film-making was encouraged. By 12, he'd made his first amateur film, an 8-minute Western called The Last Gun, which Steven financed with a tree-planting business. He'd charge admission to his home movies, getting Annie to sell popcorn, and his projects rapidly became more ambitious in scale and scope. By 14, he'd made a 40-minute war film, Escape To Nowhere, on 8mm, and another short, Battle Squad, which mixed WW2 footage with sequences he'd shot at Phoenix airport. Even that young, he'd learned how to make stationary aircraft seem as if they were travelling at supersonic speed. Within two years he was working on Firelight, a 140-minute sci-fi epic, based on a story his sister Nancy had written about a UFO attack. He would, as all the world knows, return often to the subjects of war and alien life-forms.
There would be an emotional side to his story-telling, too, and a vaguely autobiographical one. Many of Spielberg's films feature kids in distress and that aforementioned distant father. This mirrors Steven's own relationship with Arnold - not a good one. On one occasion, Arnold brought a tiny transistor home, showed it to Steven and told him is was the future. Steven took it, put it in his mouth and, washing it down with milk, swallowed it. So much for Arnold's future (though, of course, he was very right). Eventually, Arnold and Leah's marriage began to fall apart. Steven would shove towels under his door to keep out the noise of the arguments. Divorce followed, and Steven was estranged from Arnold for 15 years.
As an Eagle Scout (he'd later serve on the Advisory Board of the Boy Scouts of America, only to quit over a perceived discrimination against homosexuals) with such enthusiasm and practical experience, you'd have thought he'd walk into film school. Yet Spielberg was twice turned down for the prestigious film course at the University of Southern California, instead studying English at California State University at Long Beach, then moving into film.
It was a minor hitch since, by the age of 22, Spielberg was signed up by Universal. Legend has it that the canny Steven inveigled his way into the industry by sneaking away from a tour of Universal studios, finding an abandoned janitor's backroom, doing it up as an office and turning up for work every day until someone mistakenly gave him some work to do. In reality, it was a 26-minute movie called Amblin' that scored him his big chance. Concerning a boy and girl who meet while hitch-hiking and become friends and lovers on their way to a paradisiacal beach, the film was a prize-winner at the Atlanta Film Festival and won Steven his 7-year contract with Universal. In fond memory of this, he would name his first production company Amblin Entertainment.
There is a further story here. Amblin' was financed to the tune of $15,000 by one Denis C. Hoffman. In return for his money and support, Hoffman agreed that, instead of taking a cut of the boy's future earnings (which Hoffman apparently thought to be mean-spirited), Spielberg would direct a film of Hoffman's choosing within 10 years of the contract's signing - on 28th of September, 1968. However, in 1975, when Spielberg broke big with Jaws, the contract was said to be unenforceable. Being born on December 18th, 1947, it was claimed, Spielberg was still a minor when he signed. Come 1994, when it was revealed that Spielberg was actually born in 1946, Hoffman would sue for fraud and breach of contract.
Contracted to make TV shows, Spielberg directed episodes of Marcus Welby MD, The Name Of The Game, The Psychiatrist and Owen Marshall: Counsellor At Law. He also made a full-length Columbo movie, and helmed one of the more famous episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery. Here Joan Crawford played a rich blind woman who purchases the eyes of Tom Bosley, who's badly in debt, in order to gain eight hours of sight. She thinks the operation is a failure but, unbeknownst to her, New York is suffering a power-cut. Spooky stuff, despite the nagging suspicion that New York might have the odd emergency generator.
This episode was superb, with Spielberg drawing an excellent performance from the ageing Crawford. But it was his first TV movie proper that made him. Starring Dennis Weaver as a travelling salesman taunted, menaced and nearly killed by the faceless driver of a monster truck, Duel was a classic, so good it actually opened in European cinemas. Next came spook-flick Something Evil, with Sandy Dennis, and blackmail thriller Savage with Martin Landau, but Spielberg now had his own cinema project in mind. This was Sugarland Express, where Goldie Hawn (desperate to escape her dippy comic image) played a mother who, fearing her child is to be put up for adoption, persuades her hubbie to come on the run. The movie, while often hilarious (the couple are eventually tailed by hundreds of police cars), was also taut and upsetting, brilliantly handled. For his role as co-writer, Spielberg won for Best Screenplay at Cannes.
Now came the big one. Peter Benchley had scored a massive hit with his book Jaws, about a Great White Shark feasting on New England holidaymakers, and Spielberg was handed the job of taking the bestseller to the screen. It proved a nightmare big-budget debut. Not only were there all the extras to choreograph, but seabound shoots are notoriously difficult. And of course there was the shark. State of the art technology was employed to create a convincing 25-foot man-eater (affectionately known as Bruce), yet malfunctions were continual. The production was bad-tempered, the shoot over-ran by 100 days, Spielberg was almost replaced, and editing continued right up until the eve of release. Everyone expected disaster. Yet, thanks to Spielberg's mastery of suspense and clever action techniques, the $8.5 million Jaws took off, making $260 million and, in the process, beginning the trend for summer blockbusters. Beyond this, it made the world afraid to go back in the water. Some of us haven't gone back in since. We don't much like to inspect the underside of boats either. Spielberg was now Hollywood's It Boy, and he immediately took the opportunity to make a "real" sci-fi movie. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, like Jaws starring Richard Dreyfuss (Spielberg calls him his alter ego), was a monster. Combining sweeping action with intensely emotional close-ups, it saw Spielberg attempting to match his hero, David Lean, director of Lawrence Of Arabia and Bridge On The River Kwai (another of his influences, Francois Truffaut actually starred in Close Encounters). The SFX were mind-boggling, even out-shining those of the movie's sci-fi rival in 1977, Star Wars.
Spielberg could now do as he pleased, and he nearly blew it. 1941 was another epic, this time concerning events surrounding Pearl Harbour. However, starring John Belushi, it was also intended to be a comedy and, though stylish, it just wasn't funny. It was Spielberg's first and last real failure, having the effect of launching him on an unbelievable run of success. Next came the swashbuckling and enormously exciting Raiders Of The Lost Ark, produced by fellow-wunderkind George Lucas, which introduced renegade academic Indiana Jones and allowed Spielberg his first pop at the Nazis (his father had had relatives in the death camps). Next came ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, starring Spielberg's god-daughter Drew Barrymore and involving a cute baby alien abandoned on Earth. The first production by Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, it was the biggest grosser in history, sending him on his way to a personal fortune that would eventually top $2 billion. More success followed with the movie version of The Twilight Zone and the Raiders sequel Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, if anything better than the original. In the meantime, there were big production successes with Poltergeist, Gremlins and The Goonies, the first and third based on stories written by Spielberg. He could do no wrong.
Well, not in the public's eyes. Critics, on the other hand, found his work spurious and emotionally flimsy, claiming his films were all flash and no content. Oscar-nominated as Best Director for Close Encounters, Raiders and ET, he was overlooked each time. Spielberg reacted by getting serious, taking on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple, another hit novel, this time concerning the journey of black women to self-discovery and inner liberation. Again the critics went at him, complaining that the film was too sugary (as if the book wasn't). The film was put up for eleven Oscars but Spielberg the director was pointedly ignored.Still, he persisted. Empire Of The Sun was a superb film, outlining the boyhood of author JG Ballard in Japanese prison camps. There were brilliant performances by John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson and a host of Brit favourites. Once more the stunning action was combined with scenes of tremendously human interaction, making sense of Spielberg's assertion that "Before I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films. They tend to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and The Searchers". It was superb, but not a big hit, unlike the following third Indiana Jones instalment (Spielberg had been working on Rain Man for five months, but had to helm The Last Crusade because he'd shaken on it). And, aside from the moderately successful Always (a remake of his boyhood favourite A Guy Named Joe, and featuring the final performance of Audrey Hepburn, who donated her entire $1 million fee direct to UNICEF), and Hook, a retelling of Peter Pan that was a little too whimsical for its own good, he now ONLY made big hits.
First came Jurassic Park. Like Jaws with dinosaurs, this allowed Spielberg to once again exhibit his awesome ability in the use of shock tactics. The computer-generated monsters furthermore kept him on the cutting edge of popular cinema and, as Jurassic Park was the biggest grosser ever (beating Spielberg's own ET) and, combined with its sequel The Lost World, made $1.6 billion, he was furthermore very rich indeed. But Spielberg really wanted respect and set to work on a movie he'd been planning for a decade. Based on Thomas Keneally's Booker Prize-wining book, Schindler's List told the tale of a Nazi who risked his life and fortune to save Jews from the extermination camps. Spielberg had never dealt with ethnicity before but, with Empire Of The Sun, he did have experience of portraying large scale wartime misery. With the film shot in stark black and white, Liam Neeson excellent as the dissolute altruist and Ralph Fiennes even better as the cruel, tortured Kommandant, Schindler's List was magnificent. And, given Clint Eastwood's recent triumph with Unforgiven, the Academy were in the mood to accept that fact, bestowing upon Spielberg the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.
Of course, the movie made a fortune but Spielberg, considering it to be "blood money", gave his share to various Jewish projects via the Righteous Persons Foundation. He also established the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation which, in 57 countries and 32 languages, taped over 50,000 statements from victims and witnesses of the Holocaust.
It all just got bigger and better. Having made Amistad, the tale of a slave revolt aboard ship and the subsequent trial ("Give us us FREE!"), Spielberg upped the ante by forming the multi-media giant Dreamworks with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, dealing in live action and animated features, music, television programming and interactive software - the company insuring Steven's life for $1.2 billion. He was building a big family with actress Kate Capshaw (who'd starred in Temple Of Doom), siring Sasha, Sawyer, Jessica and Destry and adopting Theo and Mikaela (both black, if you ever doubted Spielberg's sincerity with The Color Purple or Amistad). And he paid out a very big divorce settlement to his ex, Amy Irving, who bore him son Max and, in 1989, took him for between 100 and 125 million dollars.
Having proved himself as a "serious" director, Spielberg took his newfound reputation and returned to his roots (remember Escape To Nowhere and Battle Squad?) with Saving Private Ryan, the first large-scale WW2 movie since Richard Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far. Almost foolishly ambitious, it attempted to accurately portray the full horror of the Normandy landings and, with the bullets hissing through the water, the sound and vision rising and falling, and the bodyparts flying, it was indeed as terrifying as it could be. Without Bruce suddenly gliding into sight, that is. The movie was extraordinary, spawning Band Of Brothers (a collaboration between Spielberg and Ryan star Tom Hanks and, at $120 million, the most expensive TV drama ever), and winning Spielberg another Oscar. So bruised was Spielberg by his previous Oscar experiences, he humbly asked in his acceptance speech "Am I allowed to say I really wanted this?"
Spielberg was now THE major player in Hollywood. Aside from his own monstrously successful projects, he'd been involved in the production of smashes like Deep Impact, Men In Black, Twister and the Back To The Future trilogy. On TV, there was ER and Sea Quest DSV. And there was the animation, a childhood love. Spielberg had his own Amblination studio, and helped make An American Tail, Land Before Time and Fievel Goes West, as well as the TV hits Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs and Pinky And The Brain.
Now came AI: Artificial Intelligence, Spielberg being one of the very few directors with the class and the cajones to take over the project after the death of Stanley Kubrick. Starring Haley Joel Osment as a 'borg seeking the meaning of humanity, it saw Spielberg once again viewing the world through a child's eyes, as he had done with ET, Empire Of The Sun and, in a roundabout way, with Duel and Raiders, the heroes of which were most child-like in being confronted and confounded by a cruel (read Adult) world. Arnold's distance had certainly left its mark. There would have been more, as Spielberg had been down to direct Big, with Harrison Ford in the Tom Hanks role, but he pulled out so as not to steal the thunder of sister Annie who co-wrote the script (and received an Oscar nomination for her pains).
In 2000, Spielberg was made a Knight of the British Empire for his services to the British film industry (though, not being a Commonwealth citizen, he cannot call himself Sir Steven), having earlier received a Bundesverdienstkreuz mit Stern, Germany's highest civil distinction. His face was now familiar to all, though he had made several high profile onscreen appearances. He'd turned up in Michael Jackson's video for Liberian Girl, and Cyndi Lauper's Goonies R Good Enough. He was Man In Electric Wheelchair in Gremlins, a tourist at the airport in Temple Of Doom, the Cook County clerk in The Blues Brothers, and a voice on the radio in Jaws.It wasn't all good. In 1998, one Jonathan Norman was jailed for life for stalking Spielberg, and even threatening to rape him. But Spielberg deals in decency where he can. His deep love of film causes him to spend large sums on historical artifacts and donate them to the Academy for posterity - items including Clark Gable's Oscar for It Happened One Night ($607,500), Betty Davis's for Jezebel ($578,000) and an original Rosebud sledge from Citizen Kane. He ensured a US release for Dreams, by Kurosawa, another big influence. And he's strict but fair and kind with those around him. Hiring Tom Sizemore for Ryan, he was aware of the actor's addiction to heroin and cocaine and told him he'd have him tested every day of the shoot. If a trace of drugs was found, even on the last day, he'd re-cast and re-shoot, no matter what the expense. Sizemore stayed clean.
2001 saw Spielberg deliver the film version of another publishing phenomenon, Harry Potter And The Sorceror's Stone. At least, that's how the movie was presented even though Spielberg did not direct it. "For me," he said "that was shooting ducks in a barrel. It's just a slam-dunk. It's like withdrawing a billion dollars and putting it into your personal bank accounts". The movie was actually directed by Chris Columbus, but this is seldom mentioned. Though he helmed such mega-hits as Home Alone, Mrs Doubtfire and Stepmom, Columbus's achievements pale beside those of his producer. Spielberg is now a kind of cinematic brand-name.
After the mega-success of Harry Potter, one of the biggest hits in history, came the collaboration everyone was waiting for - Spielberg and Cruise, the biggest name and the biggest face. In Minority Report (like Blade Runner based on the work of Philip K. Dick) Cruise played John Anderton, head of a pre-crime unit who, thanks to the work of psychics, bust criminals before they actually commit their crimes. Then he himself is accused and disappears into a world of crazy intrigue, in the first real detective story Spielberg's directed since Columbo. It was yet another US Number One.
After this came another thriller, Catch Me If You Can, this time with old buddy Tom Hanks playing an FBI agent tracking down young con artist Leonardo DiCaprio. Then there would be Indiana Jones 4, written by Frank "Shawshank Redemption" Darabont, and once again starring Harrison Ford and Spielberg's wife, Kate Capshaw.
More hits, more money to add to the billions already made. Spielberg had reached a peak undreamed of by most directors. George Lucas has had hits, too, but - remember - almost exclusively with Star Wars. All the different things Spielberg touches turn to gold. And now comes a new challenge. Spielberg has always wanted the respect of his peers, and always loved the history of cinema and its pioneers. He would love to be counted amongst them. We can now, after Indiana Jones 4, expect a deeper Spielberg, a Spielberg with something to say. And, of course, he's sure to also deliver us a massive injection of entertainment. That's Spielberg - always the selling point, the ONLY guaranteed good time.

Britney Spears

Britney Spears (born 02.12.1981) - American singer.

Born on December 2, 1981, Britney Jean Spears was destined for stardom. “Even as a little baby, Britney was a real darling…she was always being noticed.” Says Lynne Spears, Britney's Mom. Lynne has even said that Britney was dancing around at the early age of two. In fact, Britney's parents believed in her abilities so much that Lynne would drive two hours everyday just so Britney could attend gymnastics classes. Although gymnastics was a fun pastime for Britney--the uneven bars and floor exercise were her favorites--she found that she wasn't nearly as strong as the other girls and although she practiced over three hours a day, the moves didn't come near as easy to her. Giving up on gymnastics was a total loss, however, as Britney soon found out that it had developed her skills as a dancer. Changing her goals, the future queen of pop performed at her first talent show at the early age of six. By the time she was nine, she was already traveling around to different dance competitions performing in the jazz lyrical dancing category. Gymnastics and dancing at an early age wasn't the only preparation she did for her future career--Lynne has said that Britney could be found singing all the time. The song “What Child is This” was her first key to stardom--she sang it at her kindergarten graduation. It wasn't until later that Lynne realized that Britney could have a future in singing, when Britney was bouncing around on the trampoline. On top of Britney's singing and dancing as a young child, she also competed in beauty pageants. At five she won first place in the Kentwood Dairy Festival; at seven, she was awarded silver first-prize for Miss Talent USA. And that's not all--the Spears' home is filled with other trophies Britney has collected over the years.
The Mickey Mouse Club was Britney's first real taste of success, but initially she wasn't allowed on the show because of her age. The producer of the show knew talent when he saw it, though, and set Britney up with an agent in New York. Britney spent three summers at the Professional Performing Arts School Center and appeared in a number of off-Broadway productions. Her first real lead was in a comedy called Ruthless. In 1992, Britney left Ruthless and landed a spot on Star Search. She won the first round, but was beaten by another contestant in the second. This setback didn't deter Miss Spears, who knew in her heart that she was destined for greater things. Finally, Britney returned to audition for the MMC again; except this time she was offered a job! Along with Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Christina Aguilera, and Kari Russell, Britney rapped, sang, and danced through over 110 skits on the show. After two years, in 1994, MMC was canceled, leaving Britney to wonder what was next.
Britney tried the “normal” kid thing for awhile, but by age fifteen she couldn't stand being out of the spotlight anymore. She started out by recording several songs on a homemade demo and then returned to the person who had helped her out before: Entertainment Lawyer Larry Rudolph. Rudolph immediately set Britney up with Jive Records. After listening to her tape, Jeff Fenster, senior vice president of artists and recording for Jive Records, said, “she was intriguing, so we had her come in and audition for us in person.” What did she audition to? “Jesus Loves Me” and “I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston. After her performance, everyone in the room was amazed and Britney was immediately offered a recording contract.
Shortly after, Jive went to work on Britney's first album. The eleven tracks on her freshmen album were recorded all over the world: from Sweden at Max Martin's studio to New Jersey, where she worked with Eric Foster White. After the production on her CD was finished, Jive set forth on promoting their newest artist. Months before her album came out Britney's name was on teenager's lips everywhere. She even embarked on a mini-tour throughout malls in the US to promote her yet-to-be released CD. Britney then landed the coveted spot as *N Sync's opening act on their 1998 tour. But, that was only the edge of the iceberg for Britney.
In late December 1998, Jive Records released Britney's first single “…Baby One More Time” and by January, it was a number-one hit. Britney's album debuted at number one shortly thereafter, paving the road for one of the world's biggest stars. Unfortunately, in February 1999, Britney's luck took a turn for the worst. While filming the video for her second single, “Sometimes,” Britney tore cartilage in her left knee and was forced take a brief break to have surgery. After she was done recuperating, Jive immediately set her up with her own headlining tour sponsored by Tommy Hilfiger.
From then on, Britney's career has been a roller coaster ride. She has had two more albums released, “Oops!… I Did It Again” and “Britney” and achieved major commercial success through both. So far, she's had 11 Number One Hits and promises more with her much-anticipated fourth album due out sometime in November 2003. Britney also starred in a teen movie called “Crossroads” and is planning on furthering her acting career by appearing in another feature film about the life of Nascar Drivers. She's been the spokesperson for Pepsi and is now taking on the NFL.
Britney has never had a problem staying in the spotlight with everything that surrounds her. Her career has been built out of controversy and people keep coming back begging for more. In the beginning of her career the hottest talk in Hollywood was that Ms. Spears got breast implants in hopes to boost her image. No sooner did that talk die down before new rumors that she was dating teen heartthrob Justin Timberlake came out. These happened to be true, and Justin and Britney emerged as one of the hottest new couples on the scene. In March 2002, their four-year romance ceased due to various speculated reasons. Justin's “Cry Me a River” video seems to be the only clues as to why their relationship ended, essentially accusing Britney (through a look alike model) of cheating. Britney, however, has chosen to remain discreet about her love life. She did admit that her girl-next-door image wasn't entirely true: after years of speculation, she revealed that she wasn't a virgin. On! top of that, she smoked and drank alcohol. The media had a hay day coupling Britney with every single man in Hollywood, of which Britney can only laugh. Now, Britney has added further controversy to her career by kissing Madonna during their performance at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, a move that apparent Ms. Spears suggested herself.
Whether it be singing at a kindergarten graduation or performing at the Grammy's, Britney has wowed crowds for years. Having been crowned as the “Princess of Pop,” it seems that Britney's career has no bounds and can go wherever she chooses for it. All we can do is sit back and enjoy the ride.

Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone (born 06.07.1946) - American actor.

An icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism, Sylvester Stallone is responsible for creating two characters who have become a part of the American cultural lexicon: Rocky Balboa, the no-name boxer who overcame all odds to become a champion, and John Rambo, the courageous soldier who specialized in violent rescues and revenge. Both characters are reflections of Stallone's personal experiences and the battles he waged during his transition from a poor kid in Hell's Kitchen to one of the world's most popular stars.
According to Stallone, his was not a happy childhood. On July 6, 1946, in the aforementioned part of Manhattan, Sylvester Enzio Stallone was born to a chorine and an Italian immigrant. A forceps accident during his birth severed a facial nerve, leaving Stallone with parts of his lip, tongue, and chin paralyzed. In doing so, the accident imprinted Stallone with some of the most recognizable components of his persona: the distinctively slurred (and some say often nearly incomprehensible) speech patterns, drooping lower lip, and crooked left eye that have been eagerly seized upon by caricaturists. To compound these defects, Stallone was a homely, sickly child who once suffered from rickets. His parents were constantly at war and struggling to support Stallone and his younger brother, Frank Stallone (who became a B-movie actor). The elder brother spent most of his first five years in the care of foster homes. Stallone has said that his interest in acting came from his attempts to get attention and affection from those strangers who tried to raise him. When he was five, his parents moved their family to Silver Spring, MD, but once again spent their time bickering and largely ignored their children. Following his parents' divorce in 1957, the 11-year-old Stallone remained with his stern father. The actor's teen years proved even more traumatic. As Stallone seemed willing to do just about anything for attention, however negative, he had already been enrolled in 12 schools and expelled several times for his behavior problems. His grades were dreadful and his classmates picked on him for being different. Stallone coped by becoming a risk taker and developing elaborate fantasies in which he presented himself as a brave hero and champion of the underdog. At age 15, Stallone moved to Philadelphia to be with his mother and her new husband. By this time, he had begun lifting weights and was enrolled in Devereaux High School, a facility for emotionally disturbed children. There he took up fencing, football, and the discus. He also started appearing in school plays. Following graduation, Stallone received an athletic scholarship for the American College of Switzerland. While there he was a girls' athletic coach and in his spare time starred in a school production of Arthur Miller's +Death of a Salesman. The experience inspired him to become an actor and after returning stateside, he started studying drama at the University of Miami until he decided to move to New York in 1969.
While working a variety of odd jobs, Stallone auditioned frequently but only occasionally found stage work, most of which was off-Broadway in shows like the all-nude +Score and +Rain. He even resorted to appearing in the softcore porn film, Party at Kitty's and Studs, which was later repackaged as The Italian Stallion after Stallone became famous. Stallone's face and even his deep voice were factors in his constant rejection for stage and film roles. He did nab a bit role in Woody Allen's Bananas (1971), but after he was turned down for The Godfather (1971), Stallone became discouraged. Rather than give up, however, Stallone again developed a coping mechanism -- he turned to writing scripts, lots of scripts, some of which were produced. He still auditioned and landed a starring role in Rebel (1973). During his writing phase, he married actress Sasha Czack in late 1974 and they moved to California in the hopes of building acting careers. His first minor success came when he wrote the screenplay for and co-starred in the nostalgic Lords of Flatbush (1974) with Henry Winkler. The film's modest success resulted in Stallone's getting larger roles, but he still didn't attract much notice until he penned the screenplay for Rocky. The story was strong and well written and studios were eager to buy the rights, but Stallone stipulated that he would be the star and must receive a share of the profits. Producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff accepted Stallone's terms and Rocky (1976) went on to become one of the biggest movie hits of all time. It also won several Oscars including ones for Best Picture, Best Director for John Avildsen, and a Best Actor nomination for Stallone.
Suddenly Stallone found himself on Hollywood's A-list, a status he has largely maintained over the years. In addition to writing four sequels to Rocky, he penned three Rambo films (First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Rambo 3) and F.I.S.T. (1979). Stallone made his directorial debut with Paradise Alley, which he filmed in Hell's Kitchen. He also wrote and directed but did not appear in the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive (1983). In addition, Stallone has continued to appear in the films of other directors, notably Demolition Man (1993), Judge Dredd (1995), and Copland (1997), a film in which he allowed himself to gain 30 pounds in order to more accurately portray an aging sheriff. Occasionally, Stallone has ventured out of the action genre and into lighter fare with such embarrassing efforts as Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) and Oscar (1991), which did not fare well at the box office. Following these missteps, Stallone found greater success with the animated adventure Antz (1998), a film in which his very distinctive voice, if not his very distinctive physique, was very much a part. Stallone was back in shape for the 2000 remake of Get Carter and hit the race tracks in the following year in the CART racing thriller Driven.
Though he has found great professional success, Stallone has still had his share of personal grief. With his first wife Sasha, Stallone had two sons, Sage (who is launching his own acting career) and Seargeoh, the second of whom was diagnosed as autistic in 1982. The stress of the situation caused Stallone's marriage to end in 1985. Afterwards, Stallone began dating many women and became a favorite topic of the tabloids, especially when less than a year after the breakup, he married statuesque model Brigitte Nielsen and then divorced her in a well-publicized battle 18 months later. In the late '80s, Stallone met 19-year-old model Jennifer Flavin. The two lived together for three years and married in May, 1997. By summer's end, they had a baby girl, Sofia, who was born with a hole in her heart. In October it was repaired and the now healthy girl has proven to be a fighter, just like her famous dad.

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky (17.06.1882 - 06.04.1971) - Russian composer.

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, considered by many in both the West and his native land to be the most influential composer of 20th century music. He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century.In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works.
Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Serge Diaghilev and performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet): L'Oiseau de feu ("The Firebird") (1910), Petrushka (1911/1947), and Le sacre du printemps ("The Rite of Spring") (1913). The Rite, whose premiere provoked a riot, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure; to this day its vision of pagan rituals, enacted in an imaginary ancient Russia continues to dazzle and overwhelm audiences.
After this first Russian phase he turned to neoclassicism in the 1920s. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue, symphony), frequently concealed a vein of intense emotion beneath a surface appearance of detachment or austerity, and often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, for example J.S. Bach, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky.
In the 1950s he adopted serial procedures, using the new techniques over the final twenty years of his life to write works that were briefer and of greater rhythmic, harmonic, and textural complexity than his earlier music. Their intricacy notwithstanding, these pieces share traits with all of Stravinsky's earlier output; rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few cells comprising only two or three notes, and clarity of form, instrumentation, and of utterance.
He also published a number of books throughout his career, almost always with the aid of a collaborator, sometimes uncredited. In his 1936 autobiography, Chronicles of My Life, written with the help of Alexis Roland-Manuel, Stravinsky included his infamous statement that "music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all." With Roland-Manuel and Pierre Souvtchinsky he wrote his 1939–40 Harvard University Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, which were delivered in French and later collected under the title Poetique musicale in 1942 (translated in 1947 as Poetics of Music). Several interviews in which the composer spoke to Robert Craft were published as Conversations with Igor Stravinsky They collaborated on five further volumes over the following decade.
Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (renamed Lomonosov in 1948), Russia and brought up in Saint Petersburg. His childhood, he recalled in his autobiography, was troublesome: "I never came across anyone who had any real affection for me." His father, Fyodor Stravinsky, was a bass singer at the Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg, and the young Stravinsky began piano lessons and later studied music theory and attempted some composition. In 1890, Stravinsky saw a performance of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky Theater; the performance, his first exposure to an orchestra, mesmerized him. At fourteen, he had mastered Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto in G minor, and the next year, he finished a piano reduction of one of Alexander Glazunov's string quartets.
Despite his enthusiasm for music, his parents expected him to become a lawyer. Stravinsky enrolled to study law at the University of St. Petersburg in 1901, but was ill-suited for it, attending fewer than fifty class sessions in four years. After the death of his father in 1902, he had already begun spending more time on his musical studies. Because of the closure of the university in the spring of 1905, in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, Stravinsky was prevented from taking his law finals, and received only a half-course diploma, in April 1906. Thereafter, he concentrated on music. On the advice of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, probably the leading Russian composer of the time, he decided not to enter the St. Petersburg Conservatoire; instead, in 1905, he began to take twice-weekly private tutelage from Rimsky-Korsakov, who became like a second father to him.
1905 also saw his betrothal to his cousin Katerina Nossenko, whom he had known since early childhood. They were married on 23 January 1906, and their first two children, Fyodor and Ludmilla, were born in 1907 and 1908 respectively.
In 1909, his Feu d'artifice (Fireworks), was performed in St Petersburg, where it was heard by Sergei Diaghilev, the director of the Ballets Russes in Paris. Diaghilev was sufficiently impressed to commission Stravinsky to carry out some orchestrations, and then to compose a full-length ballet score, L'Oiseau de feu (The Firebird).
Stravinsky travelled to Paris in 1910 to attend the premiere of The Firebird. His family soon joined him, and decided to remain in the West for a time. He moved to Switzerland, where he lived until 1920 in Clarens and Lausanne. During this time he composed three further works for the Ballets Russes—Petrushka (1911), written in Lausanne, and Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) (1913) and Pulcinella, both written in Clarens.
While the Stravinskys were in Switzerland, their second son, Soulima (who later became a minor composer), was born in 1910; and their second daughter, Maria Milena, was born in 1913. During this last pregnancy, Katerina was found to have tuberculosis, and she was placed in a Swiss sanatorium for her confinement. After a brief return to Russia in July 1914 to collect research materials for Les Noces, Stravinsky left his homeland and returned to Switzerland just before the outbreak of World War I brought about the closure of the borders. He was not to return to Russia for nearly fifty years.
He moved to France in 1920, where he formed a business and musical relationship with the French piano manufacturer of Pleyel. Essentially, Pleyel acted as his agent in collecting mechanical royalties for his works, and in return provided him with a monthly income and a studio space in which to work and to entertain friends and business acquaintances. He also arranged, one might say re-composed, many of his early works for the Pleyela, Pleyel's brand of player piano, in a way that makes full use of the piano's 88 notes, without regard for the number or span of human fingers and hands. These were not recorded rolls, but were instead marked up from a combination of manuscript fragments and handwritten notes by the French musician, Jacques Larmanjat, who was the musical director of Pleyel's roll department. Stravinsky later claimed that his intention had been to give listeners a definitive version of the performances of his music, but since the rolls were not recordings, it is difficult to see how effective this intention could have been in practice. While many of these works are now part of the standard repertoire, at the time many orchestras found his music beyond their capabilities and unfathomable. Major compositions issued on Pleyela piano rolls include The Rite of Spring, Petrushka, Firebird, Les Noces and Song of the Nightingale. During the 1920s he also recorded Duo-Art rolls for the Aeolian Company in both London and New York, not all of which survive.
After a short stay near Paris, he moved with his family to the south of France; he returned to Paris in 1934, to live at the rue Faubourg St.-Honore. Stravinsky later remembered this as his last and unhappiest European address; his wife's tuberculosis infected his eldest daughter Ludmila, and Stravinsky himself. Ludmila died in 1938, Katerina in the following year. While Stravinsky was in hospital, where he was treated for five months, his mother also died. Stravinsky already had contacts in the United States; he was working on the Symphony in C for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and had agreed to lecture in Harvard during the academic year of 1939-40. When World War II broke out in September, he set out for the United States.
Although his marriage to Katerina endured for 33 years, the true love of his life, and later his partner until his death, was his second wife Vera de Bosset (1888-1982). When Stravinsky met Vera in Paris in February 1921, she was married to the painter and stage designer Serge Sudeikin, but they soon began an affair which led to her leaving her husband. From then until Katerina's death from cancer in 1939, Stravinsky led a double life, spending some of his time with his first family and the rest with Vera. Katerina soon learned of the relationship and accepted it as inevitable and permanent. Around this time both left France for the USA, to escape World War II (Stravinsky in 1939 after Katerina's death, Vera following in 1940). Stravinsky and Vera were married in Bedford, MA, USA, on 9 March 1940.
At first Stravinsky took up residence in Hollywood, but he moved to New York in 1969. He continued to live in the United States until his death in 1971; he became a naturalized citizen in 1945. Stravinsky had adapted to life in France, but moving to America at the age of 58 was a very different prospect. For a time, he preserved a ring of emigre Russian friends and contacts, but eventually found that this did not sustain his intellectual and professional life. He was drawn to the growing cultural life of Los Angeles, especially during World War II, when so many writers, musicians, composers, and conductors settled in the area; these included Otto Klemperer, Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, George Balanchine and Arthur Rubinstein. He lived fairly close to both Arnold Schoenberg and George Gershwin, though he did not have a close relationship with either of them. Bernard Holland notes that he was especially fond of British writers who often visited him in Beverly Hills, "like W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Dylan Thomas (who shared the composer's taste for hard spirits) and, especially, Aldous Huxley, with whom Stravinsky spoke in French." He settled into life in Los Angeles and sometimes conducted concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the famous Hollywood Bowl as well as throughout the U.S. When he planned to write an opera with W. H. Auden, the need to acquire more familiarity with the English-speaking world[citation needed] coincided with his meeting the conductor and musicologist Robert Craft. Craft lived with Stravinsky until the composer's death, acting as interpreter, chronicler, assistant conductor, and factotum for countless musical and social tasks.
In 1962, Stravinsky accepted an invitation to return to St. Petersburg (Leningrad) for a series of concerts. He spent more than two hours speaking with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who urged him to return to the Soviet Union.[citation needed] Despite the invitation, Stravinsky remained settled in the West. In the last few years of his life, Stravinsky lived at Essex House in New York City.
He died at the age of 88 in New York City and was buried in Venice on the cemetery island of San Michele. His grave is close to the tomb of his long-time collaborator Diaghilev. Stravinsky's professional life had encompassed most of the 20th century, including many of its modern classical music styles, and he influenced composers both during and after his lifetime. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6340 Hollywood Boulevard and posthumously received the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1987.

Michael Tyson

Michael Tyson (born 30.06.1966) - American professional boxer.

Born in New York City and brought up in Brooklyn. He was often arrested as a youth for petty crimes and eventually he was sent to Tryon School in upstate New York where he was taught to box by Bobby Stewart. Tyson proved to be a natural and his physical development (he weighed 200 lb at age 13 and was strong rather than fat) only aided his cause. Stewart knew the respected trainer Cus D'Amato "cus" for his friends and in 1980 D'Amato was introduced to the boy.
Tyson made his debut in the professional ring on March 6, 1985 in Albany, New York. He won the fight in a single round. He had a further fifteen fights in 1985 winning them all by knock-out, and almost all in the first round. He fought twelve times in 1986, cutting a dangerous path through improving ranks of journeyman fighters and already attracting attention and courting media controversy (v. Jesse Ferguson). On November 22, 1986 Tyson was given his first title shot, fighting Trevor Berbick for the WBC heavyweight title it took Tyson two rounds to become the youngest heavyweight champion ever.
In 1987 Tyson defended his title against James 'Bonecrusher' Smith on March 7 in Las Vegas, Nevada. He won on a unanimous points decision and added Smith's WBA title to his existing belt. 'Tyson mania' in the media was becoming rampant. He beat [[Pinklon Thomas] in May with a knock-out in the sixth round. On August 1 he took the IBF title from Tony Tucker, winning on points to became "undisputed heavyweight champion of the world". His only other fight in 1987 was in October against the 1984 Olympic champion Tyrell Biggs, it was an workmanlike performance from Tyson ending with a seventh round TKO.
Tyson had three fights in 1988. He faced an aged and flabby Larry Holmes on January 22 which finished with a fourth round TKO. He fought an even flabbier man in Tony Tubbs in Tokyo in March, fitting in an easy two round demolition amid promotional and marketing work. On June 27 he produced a good performance against Michael Spinks, Spinks lasted fractionally over 90 seconds before his KO. But Tyson's problems outside boxing were starting to gain prominence too, his marriage to Robin Givens was heading for divorce, and his future contract was being clawed over by Don King and Bill Cayton.
In 1989 Tyson had only two fights amid personal turmoil. He faced the popular British boxer Frank Bruno in February in a below-par fight over five rounds and a one round knockout of Carl Williams in July.
By 1990 Tyson had lost direction, his personal life was in disarray and he was not training well. In a fight on February 11 with the little regarded James 'Buster' Douglas he lost to a tenth round KO and despite the protests of his manager over a 'slow count' in the eighth round Tyson lost all his belts to Douglas. Tyson's two other fights in 1990 were confidence regaining first round KOs.
In 1991 Tyson fought Donovan "Razor" Ruddock twice, once in March and again in June. There was some controversy over the first fight which Tyson won in the seventh round but at the second fight, which Tyson fought while waiting for a match against the new champion Evander Holyfield, Tyson won on points.
Tyson went on trial in Indiana charged with the rape of a 1991 Miss Black America Contest contestant named Desiree Washington on January 27, 1992 Tyson was found guilty of the rape on February 10 and imprisoned for 3 years. (Under Indiana law, a defendant convicted of a felony must begin serving his prison sentence immedately after the sentence is imposed) As a result, Tyson did not fight again until 1995.
As a Get-out-of-jail opener he won within one round against Peter McNeeley in August and beat Buster Mathis Jr. in three in December. In March 1996 Tyson regained one belt, winning the WBC title from a lumbering Frank Bruno in three rounds. In September Tyson won back the WBA in 93 seconds from Bruce Seldon, having paid Lennox Lewis $4 million dollars to 'step-aside'. On November 9 however he faced a tougher challenge in Evander Holyfield, fighting over eleven rounds Holyfield won with a TKO to become a three-times world champion.
Tyson did not fight again until June of 1997 when there was a hugely anticipated rematch with Holyfield on June 28 for the WBA title. Tyson was disqualified in the third round, he lost his temper over a head-butt from Holyfield and had come out without his gum-shield, he then bit a chunk from Holyfield's ear, when the referee, Mills Lane, warned him Tyson went for Holyfield's other ear. On July 9 Tyson was banned from boxing for one year and fined $3m.
In January 1999 Tyson fought the South African Frans Botha and while Botha initially controlled the fight Tyson landed a single good punch in round five that put Botha down. On February 5 Tyson was sentenced to a year's imprisonment, fined $5,000, and ordered to serve 2 years probation and perform 200 hours of community service for the August 31, 1998 assault on two people after a car accident. He served nine months of that sentence. On his release he fought Orlin Norris in October, where in a farcical scene Norris claimed to have twisted his ankle in the first round and refused to fight on.
In 2000 Tyson had three fights. The first was staged in England and against Julius Francis, the pre-fight arguments about whether Tyson should be allowed into the country were more entertaining than the second round KO of Francis. He also fought Lou Savarese in June in Glasgow, winning in the first round and in October the notoriously dirty Andrew Golota, winning in round three, a result that was changed to no-contest after Tyson failed a fight-related drug test. Tyson fought only once in 2001 beating Brian Nielsen in Copenhagen with a seventh round TKO.
Tyson sought to fight Lennox Lewis in 2002 in Nevada but the Nevada boxing commission refused him a license to box as he is facing possible sexual assault charges. A scuffle at a press conference finally removed any chance of a Nevada fight. The fight actually occurred in June in Memphis, Tennessee. Tyson losing in the eighth round by knockout.
On February 22, 2003, Tyson beat fringe contender Clifford Etienne 49 seconds into round one, once again in Memphis. The pre-fight was marred by rumours of Tyson's lack of fitness and that he took time out from training to party in Las Vegas and have a new facial tattoo.
In August 2003, after years of financial struggles, Tyson finally filed for bankruptcy. His bank account has been said to have a total of only 5,000 dollars. Amid all his economic troubles, he was named by Ring Magazine at number 16 among all time best hitters in boxing history in 2003.
On July 31, 2004 Tyson faced the unregarded Englishman Danny Williams in another 'come-back' fight staged in Louisville. Tyson dominated the opening two rounds. The third round was more even, with Williams getting in some clean blows and also a few illegal ones, for which he was penalised. In the fourth round Tyson was surprisingly knocked out, Williams put in over twenty unanswered punches and left the dazed Tyson slumped against the ropes. This was Tyson's fifth career defeat. Shelly Finkel, Tyson's manager, claimed that Tyson had twisted his knee in the final round.
Tyson's record stands at 50 wins, 5 losses and 2 no contests, with 44 knockout wins. In 1989 Mike was awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Overseas Personality Award.

Aleksandr Tvardovsky

Aleksandr Tvardovsky (21.06.1910 - 18.12.1971) - Russian poet.

Aleksandr Trifonovich Tvardovsky (21 June 1910 — 18 December 1971) was a Soviet poet, chief editor of Novy Mir literary magazine (1950-1954, 1958-1970).
Tvardovsky fought hard to maintain the traditional independence Novy Mir had, even against official disapproval. During his editorship the magazine published Ilya Ehrenburg's Thaw in 1954, The Vologda Wedding by Aleksandr Yashin in 1962, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1962.
He received the Stalin Prize (USSR State Prize) (1941, 1946, 1947, 1971) and of Lenin Prize (1961, for the poem Expanse after Expanse (За далью - даль)).
Tvardovsky was born in Zagorye, Russia. He joined the Communist Party in 1940 and was a war correspondent during World War II. By 1970, more hardline officials forced his resignation from Novy Mir, although he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner "for services in the development of Soviet poetry" that same year and the State Prize for Literature in the year of his death, 1971, in Moscow.

Mark Twain

Mark Twain (30.11.1835 - 21.04.1910) - American author.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) was born on 30 November 1835 in Florida. His parents were John and Jane Clemens. After moving to Missouri John met Jane and some years later they married. There were seven children in their family but only four survived: Samuel, Henry, Orion and Pamela. Samuel was the sixth child.
At the age of 4 his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri. This town impressed him and it was later described in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Missouri was known as a slave state and this theme became apparent in his writings.
Mark Twain’s father was a judge. In 1847 he died when Samuel was eleven. In 1848 Samuel became an assistant of a printer. In three years he started working as a typesetter. His brother, Orion, owned a magazine and Mark worked on different articles for its content. At the age of eighteen Mark Twain left the town and began to work as a printer. He worked in different cities of the USA.
While a voyage to New Orleans Mark Twain met Horace E. Bixby who was a steamboat pilot. He later inspired a young author to be a pilot too. Afterwards Mark Twain persuaded his brother Henry to work together. In 1858 Henry died when the steamboat exploded. It is known that Mark Twain foresaw this accident in his a dream. After this he was interested in parapsychology. In 1859 Mark Twain got a steamboat pilot license. Samuel worked as a pilot until 1861.
Mark Twain had a wife Olivia Langdon. They married in 1870 though she refused his first marriage proposal. They lived in Buffalo, New York. He started working as a writer and editor in the newspaper. The married couple had 3 daughters: Jean, Clara and Susy. His son died of diphtheria. In 1904 Olivia died. They lived together for 34 years.
Mark Twain spent a lot of time in Hartford and at Quarry Farm where he wrote his famous writings including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn etc. In 1880 Mark Twain wrote A Tramp Abroad where he described his tour of Europe. While a tour he was in London and Heidelberg.
Mark Twain became a famous American author and orator. A lot of critics and peers appreciated his wit. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn made him noted. Mark Twain used different pen names that’s why some of his works are not known.
There was a period when Mark Twain felt low. In 1896 his daughter Susy died of meningitis. In 1904 his wife died and in 1909 Jean died. He also had a close friend, Henry Rogers, who died in 1909 too.
Mark Twain was born during a visit by Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it”. This prophecy was exact. Mark Twain died of a heart attack in 1910. He was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla (10.07.1856 - 07.01.1943) - Serbian scientist

Nikola Tesla was a remarkable scientist. He was a Serbian inventor of Austro-Hungarian origin who developed the field of electrical engineering. At the same time he was a great physicist and supporter of modern electricity. Contemporaries called him “the man who invented the 20th century”, as his experiments somehow led to the next level of industrial revolution.
Tesla was born in a small village Smilijan, which is now in Croatia, on July 10, 1856, in the family of an Orthodox priest. Regardless his father’s wish to see Nikola as a priest, the future scientist was always convinced he wanted to become an engineer. In 1882 he graduated from a prestigious university in Graz. By that time he was already invited to work in Paris for one large corporation.
Soon he presented his first electric motor and got acquainted with Th. Edison. The later invited him to New York to work as an engineer, which was more than pleasant for the young inventor. Unfortunately the two talented inventors couldn’t work together and Tesla decided to quit. In 1888 he settled his own company and sold over 40 patents for large sums of money. Finally, he was financially free at the extent that he could devote more time to his beloved experiments.
Almost 7 years he dedicated to experimenting with the magnetic field and high frequencies. Starting from 1899 he led a series of experiments, proving that electrical current can be easily passed through the ground. A year later he returned to New York City to build the tower for transatlantic link establishment. The money for the project was donated by one rich banker whose surname was Morgan.
Tesla later confessed that his main aim was to create a machine capable of transmitting electricity to any corner of the planet. The great scientist died in 1943 at the age of eighty-six. The range of his discoveries was incredibly wide. He was the founder of the system of high voltages, the first samples of electromechanical generators, the rotating magnetic field, etc. In 1891 during the public lecture he demonstrated the principles of radio communication.
His discoveries formed the foundation of modern electrical engineering. His projects were willingly financed by many outstanding people of that time, including Vanderbilt, Rothschild, Astor, Morgan and others. And finally, the unit of magnetic induction is named after Tesla. Apart from that, the eccentric scientist was the owner of numerous honorable awards.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy (09.09.1828 - 20.11.1910) - Russian writer.

Leo Tolstoy (Lev Nikolayevich, Count Tolstoy), a master of realist fiction, is best known for his two longest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which are commonly regarded as among the finest novels ever written. War and Peace in particular seems virtually to define this form for many readers and critics. Among Tolstoy's shorter works, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is usually classed among the best examples of the novella. Especially during his last three decades Tolstoy also achieved world renown as a moral and religious teacher. His doctrine of nonresistance to evil had an important influence on Gandhi. Although Tolstoy's religious ideas no longer command the respect they once did, interest in his life and personality has, if anything, increased over the years.
Most readers will agree with the assessment of the 19th-century British poet and critic Matthew Arnold that a novel by Tolstoy is not a work of art but a piece of life; the 20th-century Russian author Isaak Babel commented that, if the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy. Critics of diverse schools have agreed that somehow Tolstoy's works seem to elude all artifice. Most have stressed his ability to observe the smallest changes of consciousness and
to record the slightest movements of the body. What another novelist would describe as a single act of consciousness, Tolstoy convincingly breaks down into a series of infinitesimally small steps. According to the English writer Virginia Woolf, who took for granted that Tolstoy was "the greatest of all novelists," these observational powers elicited a kind of fear in readers, who "wish to escape from the gaze which Tolstoy fixes on us." Those who visited Tolstoy as an old man also reported feelings of great discomfort when he appeared to understand their unspoken thoughts. It was commonplace to describe him as godlike in his powers and titanic in his struggles to escape the limitations of the human condition. Some viewed Tolstoy as the embodiment of nature and pure vitality, others saw him as the incarnation of the world's conscience, but for almost all who knew him or read his works, he was not just one of the greatest writers who ever lived but a living symbol of the search for life's meaning.

Early years.
The scion of prominent aristocrats, Tolstoy was born on Aug. 28 (Sept. 9, New Style), 1828, at the family estate of Yasnaya Polyana (about 130 miles [210 kilometres] south of Moscow in Tula province), where he was to live the better part of his life and write his most important works. His mother, Mariya Nikolayevna, nйe Princess Volkonskaya, died before he was two years old, and his father Nikolay Ilich, Count Tolstoy, followed her in 1837. His grandmother
died 11 months later, and then his next guardian, his aunt Aleksandra, in 1841. Tolstoy and his four siblings were then transferred to the care of another aunt in Kazan, in western Russia. Tolstoy remembered a cousin who lived at Yasnaya Polyana, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya ("Aunt Toinette," as he called her), as the greatest influence on his childhood, and later, as a young man, Tolstoy wrote some of his most touching letters to her. Despite the constant presence of death, Tolstoy remembered his childhood in idyllic terms. His first published work, Detstvo (1852; Childhood), was a fictionalized and nostalgic account of his early years.
Educated at home by tutors, Tolstoy enrolled in the University of Kazan in 1844 as a student of Oriental languages. His poor record soon forced him to transfer to the less demanding law faculty, where he wrote a comparison of the French political philosopher Charles de Secondat de Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws and Catherine II the Great's nakaz (instructions for a law code). Interested in literature and ethics, he was drawn to the works of the English novelists Laurence Sterne and Charles Dickens and, especially, to the writings of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau; in place of a cross, he wore a medallion with a portrait of Rousseau. But he spent most of his time trying to be comme il faut (socially correct), drinking, gambling, and engaging in debauchery. After leaving the university.
in 1847 without a degree, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana, where he planned to educate himself, to manage his estate, and to improve the lot of his serfs. Despite frequent resolutions to change his ways, he continued his loose life during stays in Tula, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. In 1851 he joined his older brother Nikolay, an army officer, in the Caucasus and then entered the army himself. He took part in campaigns against the native Caucasian tribes and, soon after, in the Crimean War (1853-56).
In 1847 Tolstoy began keeping a diary, which became his laboratory for experiments in self-analysis and, later, for his fiction. With some interruptions, Tolstoy kept his diaries throughout his life, and he is therefore one of the most copiously documented writers who ever lived. Reflecting the life he was leading, his first diary begins by confiding that he may have contracted a venereal disease. The early diaries record a fascination with rule-making, as Tolstoy composed rules for diverse aspects of social and moral behaviour. They also record the writer's repeated failure to honour these rules, his attempts to formulate new ones designed to ensure obedience to old ones, and his frequent acts of self-castigation. Tolstoy's later belief that life is too complex and disordered ever to conform to rules or philosophical systems perhaps derives from these futile attempts at self-regulation.

First publications.
Concealing his identity, Tolstoy submitted Childhood for publication in Sovremennik ("The Contemporary"), a prominent journal edited by the poet Nikolay Nekrasov. Nekrasov was enthusiastic, and the pseudonymously published work was widely praised. During the next few years Tolstoy published a number of stories based on his experiences in the Caucasus, including "Nabeg" (1853; "The Raid") and his three sketches about the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War: "Sevastopol v dekabre mesyatse" ("Sevastopol in December"), "Sevastopol v maye" ("Sevastopol in May"), and "Sevastopol v avguste 1855 goda" ("Sevastopol in August"; all published 1855-56). The first sketch, which deals with the courage of simple soldiers, was praised by the tsar. Written in the second person as if it were a tour guide, this story also demonstrates Tolstoy's keen interest in formal experimentation and his lifelong concern with the morality of observing other people's suffering. The second sketch includes a lengthy passage of a soldier's stream of consciousness (one of the early uses of this device) in the instant before he is killed by a bomb. In the story's famous ending, the author, after commenting that none of his characters are truly heroic, asserts that "the hero of my story--whom I love with all the power of my soul . . . who was, is, and ever will be beautiful--is the truth." Readers ever since have remarked on Tolstoy's ability to make such "absolute language," which usually ruins realistic fiction, aesthetically effective.
After the Crimean War Tolstoy resigned from the army and was at first hailed by the literary world of St. Petersburg. But his prickly vanity, his refusal to join any intellectual camp, and his insistence on his complete independence soon earned him the dislike of the radical intelligentsia. He was to remain throughout his life an "archaist," opposed to prevailing intellectual trends. In 1857 Tolstoy traveled to Paris and returned after having gambled away his money.
After his return to Russia, he decided that his real vocation was pedagogy, and so he organized a school for peasant children on his estate. After touring western Europe to study pedagogical theory and practice, he published 12 issues of a journal, Yasnaya Polyana (1862-63), which included his provocative articles "Progress i opredeleniye obrazovaniya" ("Progress and the Definition of Education"), which denies that history has any underlying laws, and "Komu u kogu uchitsya pisat, krestyanskim rebyatam u nas ili nam u krestyanskikh rebyat?" ("Who Should Learn Writing of Whom: Peasant Children of Us, or We of Peasant Children?"), which reverses the usual answer to the question. Tolstoy married Sofya (Sonya) Andreyevna Bers, the daughter of a prominent Moscow physician, in 1862 and soon transferred all his energies to his marriage and the composition of War and Peace. Tolstoy and his wife had 13 children, of whom 10 survived infancy.
Tolstoy's works during the late 1850s and early 1860s experimented with new forms for expressing his moral and philosophical concerns. To Childhood he soon added Otrochestvo (1854; Boyhood) and Yunost (1857; Youth). A number of stories centre on a single semiautobiographical character, Dmitry Nekhlyudov, who later reappeared as the hero of Tolstoy's novel Resurrection. In "Lyutsern" (1857; "Lucerne"), Tolstoy uses the diary form first to relate an incident, then to reflect on its timeless meaning, and finally to reflect on the process of his own reflections. "Tri smerti" (1859; "Three Deaths") describes the deaths of a noblewoman who cannot face the fact that she is dying, of a peasant who accepts death simply, and, at last, of a tree, whose utterly natural end contrasts with human artifice. Only the author's transcendent consciousness unites these three events.
"Kholstomer" (written 1863; revised and published 1886; "Kholstomer: The Story of a Horse") has become famous for its dramatic use of a favourite Tolstoyan device, "defamiliarization"--that is, the description of familiar social practices from the "naive" perspective of an observer who does not take them for granted. Readers were shocked to discover that the protagonist and principal narrator of "Kholstomer" was an old horse. Like so many of Tolstoy's early works, this story satirizes the artifice and conventionality of human society, a theme that also dominates Tolstoy's novel Kazaki (1863; The Cossacks). The hero of this work, the dissolute and self-centred aristocrat Dmitry Olenin, enlists as a cadet to serve in the Caucasus. Living among the Cossacks, he comes to appreciate a life more in touch with natural and biological rhythms. In the novel's central scene, Olenin, hunting in the woods, senses that every living creature, even a mosquito, "is just such a separate Dmitry Olenin as I am myself." Recognizing the futility of his past life, he resolves to live entirely for others.The period of the great novels (1863-77).
Happily married and ensconced with his wife and family at Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy reached the height of his creative powers. He devoted the remaining years of he 1860s to writing War and Peace. Then, after an interlude during which he considered writing a novel about Peter I the Great and briefly returned to pedagogy (bringing out reading primers that were widely used), Tolstoy wrote his other great novel, Anna Karenina. These two works share a vision of human experience rooted in an appreciation of everyday life and prosaic virtues.

War and Peace.
Voyna i mir (1865-69; War and Peace) contains three kinds of material--a historical account of the Napoleonic wars, the biographies of fictional characters, and a set of essays about the philosophy of history. Critics from the 1860s to the present have wondered how these three parts cohere, and many have faulted Tolstoy for including the lengthy essays, but readers continue to respond to them with undiminished enthusiasm.
The work's historical portions narrate the campaign of 1805 leading to Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, a period of peace, and Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. Contrary to generally accepted views, Tolstoy portrays Napoleon as an ineffective, egomaniacal buffoon, Tsar Alexander I as a phrasemaker obsessed with how historians will describe him, and the Russian general Mikhail Kutuzov (previously disparaged) as a patient old man who understands the limitations of human will and planning. Particularly noteworthy are the novel's battle scenes, which show combat as sheer chaos. Generals may imagine they can "anticipate all contingencies," but battle is really the result of "a hundred million diverse chances" decided on the moment by unforeseeable circumstances. In war as in life, no system or model can come close to accounting for the infinite complexity of human behaviour.
Among the book's fictional characters, the reader's attention is first focused on Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, a proud man who has come to despise everything fake, shallow, or merely conventional. Recognizing the artifice of high society, he joins the army to achieve glory, which he regards as truly meaningful. Badly wounded at Austerlitz, he comes to see glory and Napoleon as no less petty than the salons of St. Petersburg. As the novel progresses, Prince Andrey repeatedly discovers the emptiness of the activities to which he has devoted himself. Tolstoy's description of his death in 1812 is usually regarded as one of the most effective scenes in Russian literature.
The novel's other hero, the bumbling and sincere Pierre Bezukhov, oscillates between belief in some philosophical system promising to resolve all questions and a relativism so total as to leave him in apathetic despair. He at last discovers the Tolstoyan truth that wisdom is to be found not in systems but in the ordinary processes of daily life, especially in his marriage to the novel's most memorable heroine, Natasha. When the book stops--it does not really end but just breaks off--Pierre seems to be forgetting this lesson in his enthusiasm for a new utopian plan.
In accord with Tolstoy's idea that prosaic, everyday activities make a life good or bad, the book's truly wise characters are not its intellectuals but a simple, decent soldier, Natasha's brother Nikolay, and a generous pious woman, Andrey's sister Marya. Their marriage symbolizes the novel's central prosaic values.
The essays in War and Peace, which begin in the second half of the book, satirize all attempts to formulate general laws of history and reject the ill-considered assumptions supporting all historical narratives. In Tolstoy's view, history, like battle, is essentially the product of contingency, has no direction, and fits no pattern. The causes of historical events are infinitely varied and forever unknowable, and so historical writing, which claims to explain the past, necessarily falsifies it. The shape of historical narratives reflects not the actual course of events but the essentially literary criteria established by earlier historical narratives.
According to Tolstoy's essays, historians also make a number of other closely connected errors. They presume that history is shaped by the plans and ideas of great men--whether generals or political leaders or intellectuals like themselves--and that its direction is determined at dramatic moments leading to major decisions. In fact, however, history is made by the sum total of an infinite number of small decisions taken by ordinary people, whose actions are too unremarkable to be documented. As Tolstoy explains, to presume that grand events make history is like concluding from a view of a distant region where only treetops are visible that the region contains nothing but trees. Therefore Tolstoy's novel gives its readers countless examples of small incidents that each exert a tiny influence--which is one reason that War and Peace is so long. Tolstoy's belief in the efficacy of the ordinary and the futility of system-building set him in opposition to the thinkers of his day. It remains one of the most controversial aspects of his philosophy.

Anna Karenina.
In Anna Karenina (1875-77) Tolstoy applied these ideas to family life. The novel's first sentence, which indicates its concern with the domestic, is perhaps Tolstoy's most famous: "All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina interweaves the stories of three families, the Oblonskys, the Karenins, and the Levins.
The novel begins at the Oblonskys, where the long-suffering wife Dolly has discovered the infidelity of her genial and sybaritic husband Stiva. In her kindness, care for her family, and concern for everyday life, Dolly stands as the novel's moral compass. By contrast, Stiva, though never wishing ill, wastes resources, neglects his family, and regards pleasure as the purpose of life. The figure of Stiva is perhaps designed to suggest that evil, no less than good, ultimately derives from the small moral choices human beings make moment by moment.
Stiva's sister Anna begins the novel as the faithful wife of the stiff, unromantic, but otherwise decent government minister Aleksey Karenin and the mother of a young boy, Seryozha. But Anna, who imagines herself the heroine of a romantic novel, allows herself to fall in love with an officer, Aleksey Vronsky. Schooling herself to see only the worst in her husband, she eventually leaves him and her son to live with Vronsky. Throughout the novel, Tolstoy indicates that the romantic idea of love, which most people identify with love itself, is entirely incompatible with the superior kind of love, the intimate love of good families. As the novel progresses, Anna, who suffers pangs of conscience for abandoning her husband and child, develops a habit of lying to herself until she reaches a state of near madness and total separation from reality. She at last commits suicide by throwing herself under a train. The realization that she may have been thinking about life incorrectly comes to her only when she is lying on the track, and it is too late to save herself.
The third story concerns Dolly's sister Kitty, who first imagines she loves Vronsky but then recognizes that real love is the intimate feeling she has for her family's old friend, Konstantin Levin. Their story focuses on courtship, marriage, and the ordinary incidents of family life, which, in spite of many difficulties, shape real happiness and a meaningful existence. Throughout the novel, Levin is tormented by philosophical questions about the meaning of life in the face of death. Although these questions are never answered, they vanish when Levin begins to live correctly by devoting himself to his family and to daily work. Like his creator Tolstoy, Levin regards the systems of intellectuals as spurious and as incapable of embracing life's complexity.
Both War and Peace and Anna Karenina advance the idea that ethics can never be a matter of timeless rules applied to particular situations. Rather, ethics depends on a sensitivity, developed over a lifetime, to particular people and specific situations. Tolstoy's preference for particularities over abstractions is often described as the hallmark of his thought.

Conversion and religious beliefs.
Upon completing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy fell into a profound state of existential despair, which he describes in his Ispoved (1884; My Confession). All activity seemed utterly pointless in the face of death, and Tolstoy, impressed by the faith of the common people, turned to religion. Drawn at first to the Russian Orthodox church into which he had been born, he rapidly decided that it, and all other Christian churches, were corrupt institutions that had thoroughly falsified true Christianity. Having discovered what he believed to be Christ's message and having overcome his paralyzing fear of death, Tolstoy devoted the rest of his life to developing and propagating his new faith. He was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox church in 1901.
In the early 1880s he wrote three closely related works, Issledovaniye dogmaticheskogo bogosloviya (written 1880; An Examination of Dogmatic Theology), Soyedineniye i perevod chetyrokh yevangeliy (written 1881; Union and Translation of the Four Gospels), and V chyom moya vera? (written 1884; What I Believe); he later added Tsarstvo bozhiye vnutri vas (1893; The Kingdom of God Is Within You) and many other essays and tracts. In brief, Tolstoy rejected all
the sacraments, all miracles, the Holy Trinity, the immortality of the soul, and many other tenets of traditional religion, all of which he regarded as obfuscations of the true Christian message contained, especially, in the Sermon on the Mount. He rejected the Old Testament and much of the New, which is why, having studied Greek, he composed his own "corrected" version of the Gospels. For Tolstoy, "the man Jesus," as he called him, was not the son of God but only a wise man who had arrived at a true account of life. Tolstoy's rejection of religious ritual contrasts markedly with his attitude in Anna Karenina, where religion is viewed as a matter not of dogma but of traditional forms of daily life.
Stated positively, the Christianity of Tolstoy's last decades stressed five tenets: be not angry, do not lust, do not take oaths, do not resist evil, and love your enemies. Nonresistance to evil, the doctrine that inspired Gandhi, meant not that evil must be accepted but only that it cannot be fought with evil means, especially violence. Thus Tolstoy became a pacifist. Because governments rely on the threat of violence to enforce their laws, Tolstoy also became a kind of anarchist. He enjoined his followers not only to refuse military service but also to abstain from voting or from having recourse to the courts. He therefore had to go through considerable inner conflict when it came time to make his will or to use royalties secured by copyright even for good works. In general, it may be said that Tolstoy was well aware that he did not succeed in living according to his teachings.
Tolstoy based the prescription against oaths (including promises) on an idea adapted from his early work: the impossibility of knowing the future and therefore the danger of binding oneself in advance. The commandment against lust eventually led him to propose (in his afterword to Kreytserova sonata [1891; The Kreutzer Sonata]), a dark novella about a man who murders his wife) total abstinence as an ideal. His wife, already concerned about their strained relations, objected. In defending his most extreme ideas, Tolstoy compared Christianity to a lamp that is not stationary but is carried along by human beings; it lights up ever new moral realms and reveals ever higher ideals as mankind progresses spiritually.

Fiction after 1880.
Tolstoy's fiction after Anna Karenina may be divided into two groups. He wrote a number of moral tales for common people, including "Gde lyubov, tam i bog" (written 1885; "Where Love Is, God Is"), "Chem lyudi zhivy" (written 1882; "What People Live By"), and "Mnogo li cheloveku zemli nuzhno" (written 1885; "How Much Land Does a Man Need"), a story that the Irish novelist James Joyce rather extravagantly praised as "the greatest story that the literature of the world knows." For educated people, Tolstoy wrote fiction that was both realistic and highly didactic. Some of these works succeed brilliantly, especially Smert Ivana Ilicha (written 1886; The Death of Ivan Ilyich), a novella describing a man's gradual realization that he is dying and that his life has been wasted on trivialities. Otets Sergy (written 1898; Father Sergius), which may be taken as Tolstoy's self-critique, tells the story of a proud man who wants to become a saint but discovers that sainthood cannot be consciously sought. Regarded as a great holy man, Sergius comes to realize that his reputation is groundless; warned by a dream, he escapes incognito to seek out a simple and decent woman whom he had known as a child. At last he learns that not he but she is the saint, that sainthood cannot be achieved by imitating a model, and that true saints are ordinary people unaware of their own prosaic goodness. This story therefore seems to criticize the ideas Tolstoy espoused after his conversion from the perspective of his earlier great novels.
In 1899 Tolstoy published his third long novel, Voskreseniye (Resurrection); he used the royalties to pay for the transportation of a persecuted religious sect, the Dukhobors, to Canada. The novel's hero, the idle aristocrat Dmitry Nekhlyudov, finds himself on a jury where he recognizes the defendant, the prostitute Katyusha Maslova, as a woman whom he once had seduced, thus precipitating her life of crime. After she is condemned to imprisonment in Siberia, he decides to follow her and, if she will agree, to marry her. In the novel's most remarkable exchange, she reproaches him for his hypocrisy: once you got your pleasure from me, and now you want to get your salvation from me, she tells him. She refuses to marry him, but, as the novel ends, Nekhlyudov achieves spiritual awakening when he at last understands Tolstoyan truths, especially the futility of judging others. The novel's most celebrated sections satirize the church and the justice system, but the work is generally regarded as markedly inferior to War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
Tolstoy's conversion led him to write a treatise and several essays on art. Sometimes he expressed in more extreme form ideas he had always held (such as his dislike for imitation of fashionable schools), but at other times he endorsed ideas that were incompatible with his own earlier novels, which he rejected. In Chto takoye iskusstvo? (1898; What Is Art?) he argued that true art requires a sensitive appreciation of a particular experience, a highly specific feeling that is communicated to the reader not by propositions but by "infection." In Tolstoy's view, most celebrated works of high art derive from no real experience but rather from clever imitation of existing art. They are therefore "counterfeit" works that are not really art at all. Tolstoy further divides true art into good and bad, depending on the moral sensibility with which a given work infects its audience. Condemning most acknowledged masterpieces, including Shakespeare's plays as well as his own great novels, as either counterfeit or bad, Tolstoy singled out for praise the biblical story of Joseph and, among Russian works, Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead and some stories by his young friend Anton Chekhov. He was cool to Chekhov's drama, however, and, in a celebrated witticism, once told Chekhov that his plays were even worse than Shakespeare's.
Tolstoy's late works also include a satiric drama, Zhivoy trup (written 1900; The Living Corpse), and a harrowing play about peasant life, Vlast tmy (written 1886; The Power of Darkness). After his death, a number of unpublished works came to light, most notably the novella Khadji-Murat (1904; Hadji-Murad), a brilliant narrative about the Caucasus reminiscent of Tolstoy's earliest fiction.

Last years.
With the notable exception of his daughter Aleksandra, whom he made his heir, Tolstoy's family remained aloof from or hostile to his teachings. His wife especially resented the constant presence of disciples, led by the dogmatic V.G. Chertkov, at Yasnaya Polyana. Their once happy life had turned into one of the most famous bad marriages in literary history. The story of his dogmatism and her penchant for scenes has excited numerous biographers to take one side or the other. Because both kept diaries, and indeed exchanged and commented on each other's diaries, their quarrels are almost too well documented.
Tormented by his domestic situation and by the contradiction between his life and his principles, Tolstoy at last escaped incognito from Yasnaya Polyana, accompanied by Aleksandra and his doctor. In spite of his stealth and desire for privacy, the international press was soon able to report on his movements. Having contracted pneumonia, he died of heart failure at the railroad station of Astapovo (Ryazan province) on Nov. 7 (Nov. 20, New Style), 1910.

John Travolta

John Travolta (born 18.02.1954) - American actor.

John Joseph Travolta was born on the 18th of February, 1954, in Englewood, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore, was a semi-pro footballer turned tyre salesman. His mother, Helen, was the entertainer in the family. She had played in a radio vocal group called The Sunshine Sisters, and had acted and directed before becoming a high school drama teacher. John also had five brothers and sisters - Joey and Sam, and Ellen, Ann and Margaret. All of them have worked in TV, film or music. This clearly had much to do with Helen's influence, but also Salvatore's who encouraged his children by assembling a small theatre in the family's basement.
Young John was very quick to make his career choice. His great loves all pointed him towards a life onstage. He loved The Beatles, and learned to play guitar. He loved to dance, winning a Twist competition at a very young age. And he loved James Cagney. So enamoured was he of acting that little Bone (so called because he was so skinny) actually joined an Actor's Workshop at age 12. Employing all his talents, he played in local musicals and worked in dinner theatre. He took tap lessons from Gene Kelly's brother, Fred, and picked up all the new steps from the groundbreaking TV show Soul Train. It wasn't all work. He rough-housed with the rest - that famous nose of his was originally broken while larking about in the pool. But, as said, his childhood hobbies were a preparation for what was to come.
At 16, with his parents' blessing, he dropped out of High School and went to live with sister Ann in Manhattan, aiming to break into theatre (he'd already acted in summer stock). And - financing himself by working as a cashier, a luggage handler and a ticket collector - he did. All manner of off-Broadway parts came his way as he struggled for experience - Rain, Over Here! (with the Andrews Sisters!),The Boyfriend, Metamorphosis, She Loves Me, Bus Stop, Mass Appeal, Gypsy, Bye Bye Birdie are all on his theatrical CV. And, perhaps most importantly, so is Grease, Travolta touring with the show in the minor role of Doody.
In the early Seventies, he nabbed a few small TV roles, beginning as an injured hitch-hiker in Emergency! He also featured in a 1973 ad for the US Army. Then, in 1975, came the first big break, when he was cast as Vinnie Barbarino in Welcome Back Kotter, a huge hit involving a teacher returning to the inner city to teach a gang of lippy, witty teenagers. As Barbarino, the swaggering leader of the pack, armed with a mighty arsenal of rhyming insults, Travolta became the star of the show. Dumb but cool, he became the hero of drop-outs and young girls across the nation. This inevitably brought film roles. He debuted in the exceedingly strange The Tenth Level, with William Shatner. Then came Devil's Rain, with Ernest Borgnine, Ida Lupino and Shatner again. This was a peculiarly silly thriller, wherein Satanists melt their enemies, but it did give Travolta the unfortunately rare opportunity to die (of melting, naturally) screaming "Blasphemer! Blasphemer!"
With his charming smile and cocky strut, Travolta had the teenage hooligan off to a tee, so he was perfect as the jealous Nancy Allen's brutish, pig-killing boyfriend in Brian De Palma's Carrie (he's the one who sets up the bucket of blood and unwittingly brings about telekinetic disaster). But he also wanted more serious roles, and so played Tod Lubitch in The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, the tale of a young man confined to a virus-proof environment by a deficiency of his immune system. This was a touching movie, with Travolta performing well. It also saw him begin a relationship with his co-star, Diana Hyland, an actress 18 years his senior who played his mother in the movie. This was love, and for a short while Travolta's life must have seemed like a cakewalk. He had his soul-mate. He had a pop career, enjoying a Top 20 single with Let Her In in 1977 and three hit albums (he actually won a Billboard Award for Best Male Vocals for Travolta Fever). And he had the best part of his young life.
That cocky strut was about to take the world by storm as, prior to The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, Travolta had filmed a movie to be named Saturday Night Fever. Here he was Tony Manero - shop assistant by day, disco king by night - and he was fantastic. Frustrated, alienated, thuggish, sweet and, Christ, what a dancer. It's impossible to say whether his smooth moves caused the Bee Gees to sell tens of millions of albums, or whether their music made a star out of him. Whatever, the movie was a genuine phenomenon, with Travolta Oscar-nominated and, better still, a full-blown Seventies icon. The white suit he wore in the movie would later be sold at Christie's for $145,000.
Yet, just as all was going so fabulously well, life dealt him a hammer-blow. In 1977, the year Saturday Night Fever was released, Diana Hyland died of cancer, in Travolta's arms. It was a tragedy, accentuated by his mother's death a year later. And it added a terrible pathos to Travolta's next movie, Moment By Moment, where he played a young man in a turbulent love affair with an older woman, Lily Tomlin. But, much as he may have liked to have taken an elongated sabbatical, Travolta's star was remorselessly rising. Next, in Grease, he was Danny Zuko - another ladykilling teenager, this time subdued by the prim and then (after a morally dubious transformation) profoundly tarty Olivia Newton-John. The movie spawned huge hit singles for Travolta (You're The One That I Want, Sandy) and itself made over $400 million, making it the most successful musical ever.
Now Travolta tried to escape that pretty-bad-boy image, with wretched results. In Urban Cowboy he was outshone by Debra Winger and Blow Out, a superior thriller by De Palma, was not a hit. Travolta tried to repeat his first big successes by reuniting with Newton-John for Two Of A Kind, and reprising his Tony Manero role in Staying Alive. But the former was trite nonsense, while the latter (where director Sylvester Stallone pumped Travolta up to beefcake size) was just Rocky Does Ballet. Appalling stuff.
Travolta claims now that he deliberately took it very easy during these next few years, indeed he says he finally did take that sabbatical - four year's worth. Holding percentages of both Grease and Saturday Night Fever, he certainly had no need to work. He did challenge himself by appearing in Robert Altman's Pinter productions, The Room and The Dumb Waiter, but his work up until 1994 -Perfect, Twist Of Fate, Shout, Chains Of Gold, Eyes Of An Angel, and The Experts - could be used by MI6 to make master-spies spill the beans. Best not to dwell on his appearance in Prince Edward's Grand Knockout Tournament. Content or otherwise, Travolta was not getting the best parts. Not even the success of the Look Who's Talking trilogy (where, in cabbie James Ubriacco he found the character he believes to be most like himself) changed that.
What DID change it was the spawniest slice of good fortune. It's often said that Travolta was saved by Quentin Tarantino. And that's so. But Tarantino only cast Travolta in Pulp Fiction because Michael Madsen chose to appear in Kevin Costner's epic Wyatt Earp instead. So, Madsen's bitter loss (and he is hilariously bitter about it) was Travolta's gain. Accepting a mere $140,000 for his services, his Vincent Vega was a brilliantly jovial partner for born-again assassin Samuel L. Jackson. He was sleazy and cruel, but also, with his dopey speeches about chicken burgers and his groovy dancing with Uma Thurman, much like Tony Manero. Once again he was Oscar-nominated.
More hits followed. There was the Hollywood gangster comedy Get Shorty (for which he won a Golden Globe): he was impressively mean in John Woo's explosive Broken Arrow: he managed to carry Phenomenon, and the cute Michael: then there was more pyrotechnics, with Nicolas Cage in Woo's Face/Off: then Primary Colours and, proving his re-found status, a place in the all-star cast of Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. And it got even better. With his name now firmly above the titles, Travolta enjoyed major success with both A Civil Action (as a flashy lawyer busting polluters) and The General's Daughter, tracking down a killer in the military. And all this despite an incredible knack for turning down prime roles. 1997 alone saw him miss out on Good Will Hunting, Jackie Brown and As Good As It Gets. Nothing new, really. At the beginning of his career, by turning down Splash, Days Of Heaven, American Gigolo and An Officer And A Gentleman, he inadvertently helped launch both Tom Hanks and, especially, Richard Gere.
Yet, having won it all back, Travolta then faced another struggle - to keep his position. Battlefield Earth, written by L. Ron Hubbard, directed by Roger Christian, the second unit director of The Phantom Menace, and costing upwards of $70 million, really ought to have been good. Sadly, it was dreadful. And Travolta, as Terl, Psychlo Chief Of Security, could not save it. In fact, he won a Golden Raspberry as Worst Actor (he'd earlier got a Special Raspberry as Worst Actor of the Eighties). Some critics said that it was an advert for Scientology, being written by Hubbard, the Church's founder, and starring Travolta, a church member (he was introduced to it by actress Joan Pratter, back when he was doing Devil's Rain, and is a keen advocate), but Travolta quite rightly denied it. Instead of whining about the film's failure, he revelled in his own success in getting it made in the first place. And he enjoyed a reward of sorts when the movie quickly became a camp cult hit, with fans even organising conventions to celebrate it.
After this setback, Travolta tried again with Swordfish, a CIA/computer hacker thriller by Dominic Sena, but this did not fare much better, despite a minor controversy around how much money Halle Berry was paid to bare her breasts. Then came Domestic Disturbance which saw him as a divorcee whose child accuses stepdad Vince Vaughn of being a psycho criminal.
Next was John "Die Hard" McTiernan's Basic, where Samuel Jackson played a tough and thoroughly unpopular sergeant on a military base in Panama. In a heavy storm several men die and Travolta (back in General's Daughter mode) is brought in to investigate. The movie was full of twists and turns (some might even say cinematic cheating) but, perhaps because the US were presently involved in a real war in Iraq, it stiffed at the US box office, bringing in only $25 million - not much more than Travolta was paid himself. Indeed word was now spreading that Travolta's wage demands were now stifling his career. One rumour was of a $20 million fee plus another $4 million in expenses (well, jet fuel is pricey these days). He had, after all, not had a big hit since Face/Off. He didn't improve his situation by turning down the role of lawyer Billy Flynn in the money-spinning, Oscar-winning Chicago, which coincidentally broke the $100 million barrier in the week of Basic's release. That role was then taken by - yes, you've guessed it - Richard Gere.
Battling to regain his footing in the industry, Travolta now went populist. First he stepped onto the comic-book bandwagon with The Punisher (an earlier version, starring Dolph Lundgren, had actually been in the vanguard of this new wave of comic adaptations). Here Thomas Jane played the titular vigilante who swears revenge on all criminals when his family is massacred by Travolta, a notorious money launderer who's thoroughly ticked off when his son is killed in an FBI sting. Now expert at these baddie roles, Travolta would add depth with his convincing exhibition of grief for his son and jealous possessiveness over his wife. Following this would be Ladder 49, another action movie lifted above its genre by excellent characterisations. This would see Joaquin Phoenix as a fireman trapped in a major conflagration, with Travolta as his chief and mentor, single-mindedly co-ordinating the rescue attempt. Throughout, the movie would flash back over Phoenix's career, thoghtfully contemplating who'd be a fireman and why.
In between these would come A Love Song For Bobby Long, where Travolta would take the unusual step of choosing to play a character older and far hammier than himself. In the movie, young trailer-trashy Scarlett Johansson returns to New Orleans after the death of her junkie lounge-singer mother. On arrival she discovers her mum's house is occupied by drunken, intellectual dandy Travolta and his geeky sidekick Gabriel Macht. They claim the mother left them two-thirds of the property and intend to stay, so Johansson moves in and common ground is sought. She tries to get the rude and obnoxious Travolta to stop drinking, he tries to push her into further education and, gradually, as his painful past is revealed, a greater and warmer understanding is reached.
Ladder 49 and The Punisher would pull Travolta back up again after his second fall from grace. He'd rise further up the Hollywood food-chain with 2005's Be Cool, reprising his role as Chili Palmer in Get Shorty. This time, disenchanted with the film industry, Palmer moves into music, signing up torch singer Christina Milian (who brings trouble via her connections to the Russian mob) and then lounge-singer, part-time bouncer and full-time gay The Rock. The film would also see him enjoy reunions with several former co-stars - Danny De Vito, Harvey Keitel, Vince Vaughn (a man overly fly for a white guy) and Uma Thurman (a music exec's widow Palmer romances). All the while, the animation A Light Knight's Odyssey, featuring many of Hollywood's top Scientologists, lay on the shelf. As did Tarantino's initial notes for The Vega Brothers, a prequel to both Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, that would see Travolta and Michael Madsen reappearing as Vincent and Vic Vega respectively.
In the meantime, Travolta is enjoying life amongst the prime movers. Back in 1989, while filming The Experts, he met actress Kelly Preston. She was married at the time and, when that ended, she saw George Clooney (she was also briefly engaged to Charlie Sheen). But Travolta was due a break in love, and the pair re-met and were married in September, 1991, first by a French minister of Scientology and then, when that was declared illegal, by someone deemed more official. The couple have two children, son Jett and daughter Ella Bleu.
Travolta still loves dancing, and music, and he loves to fly jets, owning at least four. In 1993, after a total electric failure, at night and in icy conditions, he managed to safely land his Gulfstream. That's Travolta - smooth beyond the call of duty.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump (14.06.1946) - American businessman and president.

Donald Trump owns some of the most prestigious pieces of prime real estate in New York City. Trump has slapped his Trump brand name on some of the finest hotels, casinos and building complexes in the city.
Donald Trump was born in New York on the 14th of June 1946. His father Fred Trump was a successful property developer that helped form the young Donald's business sense. Donald acknowledged his father's influence by stating that “My father was my mentor, and I learned a tremendous amount about every aspect of the construction industry from him.”.
Trump began his career in his family's real estate business after studying at the Wharton Business School. He worked with his father for five years and was extremely successful in making profitable deals. His father commented on his son's business success by stating that "everything he seems to touch turns to gold".
After gaining the necessary business skills in real estate from his father, Donald Trump moved into the Manhattan real estate scene. He went on to acquire some of the most exclusive properties in the city. Trump Casino, Trump International Hotel, Trump Marina Hotel and Casino, Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort and Trump Tower are among his prestigious portfolio of real estate properties.
Trump brands his properties with the Trump name displayed prominently. They all have the Trump name in their titles and often have large "T" symbols placed all over the important areas of the building. Through his properties and business dealings he has developed a celebrity personality and often appears in gossip columns, television programs and magazines.
Donald Trump starred in his own reality TV program in 2004. The Apprentice program was a selection of candidates competing against each other in the area of business to ultimately become Donald Trump's apprentice. The program was watched by millions of viewers each week and was wildly successful. Each participant to be eliminated was given the now famous "you're fired" sentence.
"I mean, there's no arguing. There is no anything. There is no beating around the bush. "You're fired" is a very strong term." Donald Trump
Trump is a self confident and extravagant businessman that has made himself instantly recognizable wherever he goes. His interests include real estate, entertainment, gaming, and sports. Trump also owns part of the three largest beauty competitions in the world, consisting of Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA. He is also a successful author with several best selling business books published that include The Art of the Deal , The Art of Survival and How to get Rich. He is a member of several civic and charitable organizations and is a generous philanthropist.
In the presidential election November 8, 2016, Donald Trump, at the age of 70 years, won a victory over Hillary Clinton.

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev (28.10. [09.11. O.S.] 1818 - 22.08. [03.09. O.S.] 1883) - Russian writer.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born on 9 November 1818 in Oryol, Russia, into a wealthy family. His father was a colonel in the Imperial Russian cavalry and his mother was a rich heiress. She experienced severe hardships as a child and was unhappy in her marriage. It is also known that Turgenev’s father was a dangler. When Ivan was 16 his father died. Consequently Ivan and his brother were brought up by their cruel mother. In the childhood Turgenev was always afraid of his mother because she often beat him.
When Turgenev finished school he entered the University of Moscow. After studying for one year at the University of Moscow, Turgenev began to study at the University of Saint Petersburg. Between 1834 and 1837 he studied there and was interested in Russian literature, Classics and philology. From 1838 to 1841 he studied at the University of Berlin where he focused on history and philosophy. Ivan Turgenev completed his master’s examination in Saint-Petersburg. German society impressed him and he considered that the ideas from the Age of Enlightenment could improve his native country. Turgenev himself and many of his contemporaries were against serfdom. From 1841 he began his career in Russian civil service. Between 1843 and 1845 Turgenev worked for the Ministry of Interior.
It is known that in the childhood Turgenev listened to a family serf who read the verses from the Rossiad of Mikhail Kheraskov for him. Afterwards Ivan’s early works in literature gave indications of genius.
Turgenev never married but he was in relationships with his family’s serfs. Consequently he had an illegitimate daughter. Her name was Paulinette. Turgenev was broad-shouldered and tall but was shy, discreet and affable. Turgenev lived in different cities including Paris and Baden-Baden because he wanted to be close to the celebrated opera singer Pauline Viardot. He was in relationships with her.
Turgenev became famous when he completed his work A Sportsman's Sketches (Записки охотника), also known as Sketches from a Hunter's Album or Notes of a Hunter. This collection is a result of a time which he spent while hunting in the forests. The stories from this collection are based on his observations of nature and peasant life. This work was published in 1852.
When Tsar Nicholas I ruled a country the political situation was difficult for many scientists, writers and artists. At that time a lot of members of the intelligentsia left the country and moved to Europe. One of them was Ivan Turgenev.
In 1852 Turgenev created an obituary for Nikolai Gogol. This work was published and as a result he was put in prison for a month and then exiled to his country estate for 2 years. At that time Turgenev wrote his story Mumu. It appeared in 1854. In the early 1850s Turgenev wrote several novellas: "The Diary of a Superfluous Man ("Дневник лишнего человека"), Faust ("Фауст") and The Lull ("Затишье"). From 1853 to 1862 his famous novels Rudin ("Рудин"), A Nest of the Gentry ("Дворянское гнездо"), On the Eve ("Накануне") were completed. His most famous novel Fathers and Sons ("Отцы и дети") was completed in 1862. It should be noted that this work was criticized by many critics unfavourably. During the period of 1862-77 Turgenev wrote Smoke ("Дым"), Virgin Soil ("Новь") and other works.
Ivan Turgenev died at Bougival, near Paris in 1883. He was buried in Volkoff Cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Uma Thurman

Uma Thurman (29.04.1970) - American actress.

It's been a strange trip for Uma Thurman. Hailing from a highly intellectual background, she might have expected to lead an academic life. Instead, much to her bewilderment and horror, she was seized upon by Hollywood and thrust into the limelight as the latest teen sex symbol - a status that betrayed both her past and her desired future. And so began a decade-long journey to prove herself to be more than just a pretty girl who struck lucky - a journey that would eventually bring wealth, awards and worldwide respect.
That background was not simply intellectual, it was also hugely exotic. Her maternal grandmother, Brigit Holmquist, was a great Swedish beauty who, in 1930s Berlin, met and married the monocled Westphalian Baron Karl von Schlebrugge. After the baron had been briefly jailed by the Nazis for refusing to denounce his Jewish business partners, the couple would take off for Sweden, then Mexico and China. Such were Brigit's looks that a nude statue of her would be erected in the port town of Trelleborg, and her daughter Nena would also turn out a stunner. Spotted in a Stockholm playground by society photographer Norman Parkinson when she was just 16, she was taken to London to model for Vogue, then off to New York where she became a top fashionista. Caught up in the high-brow swinging set, she would find a father figure in psychedelic guru Timothy Leary and marry him in 1964.
Meanwhile, Robert Thurman, son of New York stage actress Elizabeth Farrar, was on a pathway all his own. Coming from a well-to-do WASP family, he'd gone to Harvard to study the classics but, at 19, had married Houston oil heiress Christophe de Menil, 7 years his senior. It didn't last, and Robert took off with some mates to ride across India on motorbikes. It was here that his life would change radically, for he'd meet the Dalai Lama and, after a protracted period of study, would become the first American to be made a Tibetan monk. He would henceforth be known as Tenzin - even his children would call him that.
Back in the US, Thurman was invited to lecture at the Hitchcock estate in Millbrook, New York, where, at the time, Leary and his acolytes were enjoying a frenetic course of acid experimentation. It was here that Robert met Nena, already attempting to extricate herself from a poorly conceived marriage. In 1966, when her divorce came through, Robert would renounce his robes and the couple would wed. Children would come soon. First Ganden (later a computer whizz), then Uma, then Dechen (an actor and director) and finally Mipam. All the names were culled from Buddhist theology.
Uma was born Uma Karuna Thurman on the 29th of April, 1970, in Boston. At age 1 and again at 11 she'd be taken to India, for around two years in total. The rest of her youth she'd spend in Amherst, Massachusetts and Woodstock, New York where Robert, the country's foremost Tibetan Buddhist scholar would hold various religious professorships. This campus life certainly invaded the home with the family discussing philosophy at the dinner table and all the kids being required to bring their own ideas to the party. Their house was often visited by Tibetan refugees, holy men and students, even the Dalai Lama himself. From the beginning, Uma's mind was forced to improve.
In many ways hers was an odd upbringing. Both Robert and Nena frowned upon Americana and did not encourage their children to engage in ordinary pursuits. This did not make life easier for the young Uma. Changing schools far more often than is usual, she already felt forever the new kid. Beyond this, her wacky name and wacky parents saw her teased mercilessly (she'd try calling herself Kelly or Linda to avoid this), and her soon-to-be-feted looks were initially a problem, too. Far taller than the rest, her features were all huge - eyes, ears, hands, feet (she'd grow to 6', with Size 11 feet) - bringing more taunts. Not particularly bright or athletic, with no social life, she felt like a freaky-looking oddball, a feeling that increased whenever she looked at her statuesque mother (and increased further when, at age 10, one of her mother's friends suggested she get a nose job).
Because of all this, Uma grew up an outsider. Indeed, given her mum's overt Eurocentricity, she did not even feel like an American. Thus displaced, she was incredibly angry, far beyond the teen norm. She might well have also been rebelling against her father's monk-like calm - she certainly went through a cheerleader period that annoyed her parents no end. She sought out extra-curricular activities that might ease her tension, bring her into contact with others in a way that she might feel was normal. Nothing worked - apart from acting. Being someone else was much, much better. From her first elementary school play she was hooked, taking acting lessons and appearing onstage wherever possible. Poetry also appealed, a big favourite being ee cummings.
As her confidence grew, so did her ambitions. At 14, she was sent to Northfield Mount Hermon School, half an hour from Amherst. However, having been treated as an adult by her parents since she was a small child, she now found school unutterably tedious. Much like Winona Ryder, god-daughter of Nena's first husband Timothy Leary, she'd decided at a very young age that acting was for her. That summer, she and a friend took off for New York City, seeking acting classes and modelling jobs. Returning to Northfield, she appeared onstage as Abigail in a production of The Crucible (coincidentally, Ryder would later take that role on the big screen), coming to the attention of some New York talent scouts. They suggested she return to the Big Apple and give acting a real go - it was just what she wanted to hear.
Dropping out of Northfield at 15 and transferring to the Professional Children's High School, she began seeking auditions in New York. With her mother introducing her to various modelling agencies, she was quickly signed by Click and found herself in Glamour magazine, being shot by many of the country's top photographers. But it was movies she was after and, at 16, she won the lead in Kiss Daddy Goodnight, as Laura Pasholensky, a young vamp who cruises bars, picking up rich older guys, then drugging and robbing them - until one unstable fellow becomes obsessed with her.
The roles now came thick and fast, allowing her drop out of school before graduation. First came Johnny Be Good, a scrappy and fairly tawdry satire on the US education system, where Anthony Michael Hall played a school football star being bribed ever more outrageously to enrol at various colleges. Uma played his girlfriend, cop's daughter Georgia Elkans, who wants him to join her in getting a good education at the local college. As said, it was tacky stuff, a sorry attempt to combine All The Right Moves with the roustabout comedies of the time - a world away from Uma's next couple of projects.
The first of these was Terry Gilliam's magnificently ambitious The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, an extraordinarily imaginative piece that saw the titular baron criss-crossing time and the universe, enjoying/enduring all manner of fabulous encounters. At one point he would come into contact with Vulcan, the God of War (Oliver Reed) and romance the god's wife, Venus. This would be Thurman, appearing naked and on one leg in a giant sea-shell, being dressed by cherubs. She and the baron would literally take off in an aerial ballroom scene, a beautiful and highly romantic distraction from the movie's ongoing mayhem.
Equally wonderful would be her part in Dangerous Liaisons, shot after Munchausen but released beforehand, concerning the massively decadent 18th Century French aristocracy, where Glenn Close sends a hilariously predatory John Malkovich to seduce the young and naпve fiancee of her ex. Eventually he does the business, Thurman putting in an excellent performance as his "victim" - shy, initially horrified, but also flattered and eventually rather keen on this thrilling new experience.
The movie was a critical smash, and was Oscar-nominated as best film, bringing nominations also to Close and Michelle Pfeiffer. Yet despite her deft handling of such a tricky role, Thurman was not afforded such kudos. Perhaps her sweet half-strip for Malkovich (an object lesson in vulnerability and longing) did the damage, perhaps it was her appearance on Rolling Stone's HOT cover the next year. Whatever, the media went wild and Uma was distraught to discover that she was now a bona fide sex symbol. Still scarred by those early "gawky" years, she couldn't believe it, didn't understand it. Despite her efforts to engage in classy productions, she believed people wanted her to be "an inflatable sex doll". She took to wearing baggy clothes and, for a while, even fled the country, hiding out in London.
But there was more personal chaos on the immediate horizon. Then dating the director Phil Joanou, who'd just delivered U2's Rattle And Hum movie, she went down to meet the stars of his latest project, State Of Grace, a gripping tale of love and betrayal in the Irish immigrant underground. Sparks instantly flew when she encountered Gary Oldman - Joanou later said it was obvious that Oldman and Thurman were (at that moment, at least) meant for each other, so he gallantly stepped aside. Elsewhere on set, Sean Penn and Robin Wright were embarking on a similarly turbulent relationship.
By the end of 1990, Uma would have appeared in another two deliberately chosen "classy" projects. First was John Boorman's Where The Heart Is, where demolition magnate Dabney Coleman moves his supposedly spoilt kids into a building he's been refused permission to destroy to see if they can stand on their own. It was an acceptable mild comedy, with Thurman appearing as one of the daughters, the ethereal, Stevie Nicks-like Daphne. Far superior was Philip Kaufman's Henry And June, concerning the three-way affair between writers Henry Miller and Anais Nin and Miller's enigmatic wife, June in 1930s Paris. Fred Ward and Maria De Medeiros were excellent as Miller and Nin, but Uma was outstanding as June, despite her tender years appearing far more worldly than her husband and proving an understandable obsession for the sexual explorer Nin.
The movie was hugely provocative, its literary roots not saving it from the censor's attention. Staying true to Miller and Nin's notions of sexual liberation, it forced the creation of the NC-17 rating (which it then received instead of an X). Absolutely No Children. And quite right, too. It was far too stylish, intelligent and erotic for the likes of them.
Henry And June was not a big hit (Thurman's next co-starring credit with Medeiros, Pulp Fiction, would be a very different story). Neither was her next feature where she played Maid Marian to Patrick Bergin's titular Robin Hood. This was actually another good film but, consciously realistic, it was buried by Kevin Costner's huge, self-mythologising Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. Lucky for her Brian De Palma had turned her down for Bonfire Of The Vanities on the grounds of lacking comedic skills.
It was proving to be a very difficult time for Uma. Having married Gary Oldman (12 years her senior) in October, 1990, she was watching the relationship rapidly swirling down the drain. Clearly she'd been attracted to Oldman's intensity and his ability - he was a true artist, just as she wished to be. But the intensity grew too much (there were also rumours of heavy drinking) and they were divorced by 1992. Both maintained a discreet hush about the split. Oldman once offered a revealing "You try living with an angel", Uma adding "Teenage weddings are in the category of things that don't count".
With her marriage over, Thurman now stepped up to deeper roles in more high-profile movies. First came Final Analysis, directed by her former beau Phil Joanou and starring Richard Gere who Uma had first met in the mid-Eighties when he and her father had been setting up the Tibet House organisation in New York. As thrillers go, the film was actually very effective. Gere played a psychiatrist treating a disturbed Uma and, in order to dig into the girl's past traumas, getting involved with her sister, Kim Basinger. This causes big trouble as it's possible Kim, Uma or both may be homicidal - and Kim's mobster boyfriend Eric Roberts certainly is.
There were more thrills to come in Jennifer 8, where Thurman took the brave step of playing blind woman Helena Robertson. Here city cop Andy Garcia is in a small town, tracking a serial killer of, yes, blind women, and it looks like Uma is next. It was another excellent performance but was not a hit, despite tight direction from Bruce Robinson, creator of Withnail And I - thus it did not silence the band of critics who could not see past Thurman's (unwanted) sex symbol image.
1993 served only to confuse matters further. In Mad Dog And Glory, an unusual comedy directed by John "Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer" McNaughton, she played a girl trying to pay off her brother's gambling debts by entering the service of gangster Bill Murray. When painfully reserved cop Robert De Niro saves Murray's life, he loans Thurman to him for a week and she, rather liking him, tries to open him up, giving him kissing lessons and the like. De Niro is naturally smitten so, when Murray wants her back, must overcome his meekness to battle for what he desires. Once more Thurman performed well, this time in hugely intimidating company, but once more the movie was no big hit. Though she was gaining experience fast, particularly from De Niro who would kindly scream at her off camera to get the right mood, to many outsiders she appeared to be treading water.
Treading water, that is, until she sank. For 1993 also brought the crazy failure of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. Here Thurman was Sissy Hankshaw, a born hitch-hiker with enormous thumbs (easy for Uma to relate to, given her ungainly shape as a kid), who becomes a "feminine hygiene" model and hooks up with feminist renegades on the outlandish Rubber Rose cattle ranch. The original novel was a counter-culture hit in the Seventies, but Gus Van Sant's meandering adaptation seemed to miss whatever points were there to be made and, really, only John Hurt, as the massively camp Countess, emerged with his reputation undamaged.
For Thurman, as Cowgirls was her first major headlining role, this was not deemed to be good. In fact many believed that the movie's failure was final proof that this was just a pretty face. The death knell was sounded on her career. But Uma, still only 6 years in, was still learning, still stretching herself, and this had always been the plan. Harvey Weinstein tells a story of how Thurman turned down a $2 million role because it would've just involved looking good. Check the list of names she had already chosen to work with - Terry Gilliam, Stephen Frears, Glenn Close, Malkovich, Pfeiffer, John Boorman, Philip Kaufman, Robert De Niro, Gus Van Sant. This was clearly not an actress in for the short haul.
Thankfully, artistic redemption came immediately in the shape of Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction. In this extraordinary, multi-faceted crime drama, Thurman beat off Holly Hunter and Meg Ryan to take her place as Mia Wallace, wife of Marcellus, an uber-thug who, we quickly learn, has thrown a man out of a window for daring to massage his beloved's Size 11s. Of all the film's myriad memorable moments, Thurman appears in several of the stand-outs. Discussing milkshakes with Travolta and winning the contest with their wacky peek-a-boo dancing. Accidentally snorting Travolta's heroin and becoming cinema's most beautiful coma victim. Leaping back to life when they've slammed a syringe full of adrenaline direct into her heart (her hi-octane performance in this scene was actually based on the similar revitalisation of a drugged panther on the set of Baron Munchausen). And she dominated the film's poster. Oscar-nominated for her efforts, suddenly she was amongst the biggest actresses in Hollywood.
And, naturally, she took no advantage of this whatsoever, not making a big budget movie for 3 full years. Attempting to widen her experience further, she reunited with her Robin Hood director John Irvin for the comedy of manners A Month By The Lake, based on the HE Bates story. Here she played Miss Beaumont, just expelled from a Swiss boarding school in 1937 and working as a nanny beside Lake Como. As spinster Vanessa Redgrave makes a tentative move on ageing major Edward Fox, so Thurman gazumps her, for no good reason beyond brattishness, and sends the poor old man wild with desire. In a very contained, British kind of way, you understand.
Next came Beautiful Girls, with Ted Demme, wherein Timothy Hutton, back in a small town for a High School reunion, gradually learns from his adolescent neighbour Natalie Portman and enigmatic blonde Thurman, that men's desire for the perfect woman destroys their chances of happiness with a real one. It was a small movie, but a meaningful one, with Uma's appearance a high-point. It would also lead to a year-long relationship with Hutton. Like Oldman, he was another intense and highly respected actor - definitely someone to learn from.
Following this came The Truth About Cats And Dogs, probably Thurman's weakest movie yet. Often perverse in her choices, here she decided to play to and thus undermine her lingering reputation as beauty first/actress second. In a Roxanne-style set-up, Janeane Garofolo fancies Ben Chaplin, thinks she hasn't got a hope, and asks friend Uma to win his heart for her. As said, it was wretched stuff, with none of the leads having much to work with. It was a painfully far cry from the project Thurman had had in mind for this point - a biopic of Marlene Dietrich had been cancelled due to the untimely death of proposed director Louis Malle.
After contributing to friend Griffin Dunne's short Duke Of Groove, now Thurman chose to re-enter the big-time. And what better way to do it than as a super-villain in the Batman franchise? As Poison Ivy, a formerly mild mannered botanist now aiming to kill all humans and leave the world free for her evil, genetically-modified plant buddies, she really was quite special. For the first time since her screen debut, she was a true vamp, entrancing all the men with her air-borne aphrodisiacs (not that she needed those, given the sensuousness of her performance). Unfortunately, though Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered a surprisingly emotional Mr Freeze and merchandise tie-ins gave it a mighty profit, Batman And Robin was deemed a disaster, the death of the franchise. Much of the blame was laid on director Joel Schumacher, though really it was more to do with the undermining of Tim Burton's original vision by the silly and perfunctory presence of both Robin and Batgirl. Whatever, Thurman was the only one who emerged with her reputation actually enhanced.
Now her life changed radically. Appearing in the complicated and philosophical Gattaca, wherein a future world is ruled by a biotech-created super-elite, she fell for the movie's star, Ethan Hawke. They had met earlier, once at an ATM machine, then at the premiere of Pulp Fiction and Thurman had considered him too young for her (he was only a year younger, but she was always looking to gain experience). Now she recognised him as an actor, writer and director, and a sensitive and intense worker. Soon she was pregnant with daughter Maya Ray, born in 1998, two months after the couple married in New York's Cathedral of St John the Divine (their union being blessed by the Dalai Lama). A son, Levon (often called Roan in the press because that's what Maya used to call him) would follow in 2002.
Professionally, she moved on to Victor Hugo's relentlessly depressing Les Miserables. Though the story was based around petty thief Liam Neeson rising to prominence despite a lifelong pursuit by obsessive copper Geoffrey Rush, it was Thurman who stole the show. As Fantine, an unfortunate fired from her job at Neeson's factory for bearing his bastard child, then turning to prostitution before succumbing to a fatal illness, she hit an impressive balance of decency, strength and terrible vulnerability.
Now, though, came her third high-profile disaster with The Avengers. As an eye-catchingly leather-clad Emma Peel opposite Ralph Fiennes funky Steed, battling Sean Connery and his destructive weather-machine, you'd have thought she'd have been onto a winner. Sadly, confusion reigned, the plot was lost (in fact many plots were lost) and, having been hacked from 150 minutes down to 89, the film sneaked out to the multiplexes without press showings. Reviews, of course, were not kind. Thurman, it was said, was lost somewhere between a vamp and an ice-queen. Whether this would have been the case had most of her performance not been left in the editing suite we will never know.
As ever, she took the slings and arrows without grumbling and moved on to another series of more "artistic" projects. First there was Woody Allen's Sweet And Lowdown, where she played a mean-hearted novelist and society-type who coaxes wayward jazz guitarist Sean Penn away from the true love of mute Samantha Morton and into an unhappy marriage. Then there was a long-overdue return to the stage in a New York production of The Misanthrope, followed by more Frenchness in Vatel, directed by Roland Joffe, where a prince, hoping for favours, throws a 3-day feast for Louis XIV. Here Thurman was a much-desired lady-in-waiting who causes trouble by engaging in an affair with the prince's head honcho Gerard Depardieu. It was a lavish piece, but strangely unengaging, though Thurman was often impressive in her stunning baroque poses.
Also lavish, but far more interesting was Henry James' The Golden Bowl, a Merchant-Ivory production. Uma had originally turned down the movie but was persuaded to reconsider by her friend Natasha Richardson. A good move, as it allowed her to engage with a fascinating character in a complex menage a quatre. Here she's Charlotte Stant, lover of impoverished Italian prince Jeremy Northam. When Northam marries Uma's mate Kate Beckinsale for money, Uma then marries Beckinsale's rich daddy Nick Nolte, in order to stay close to her beloved. Of course, her manipulations can only lead to emotional catastrophe.
Briefly, a working relationship with her husband Hawke flared up in 2001. First came Richard Linklater's Tape, based on Stephen Belber's play, where she, Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard were old High School friends discussing a painful past - and in particular dealing with the boundaries between sex and rape. For this Uma would be nominated for an Independent Spirit award. Then came Hawke's own directorial debut, Chelsea Walls, 5 stories set in one day at the infamous Chelsea Hotel, invoking the spirit of the Beat generation. In Thurman's segment she's the object of painter Vincent D'Onofrio's desire, but turns him down in favour of some absent lover. The movie, an extremely arty mosaic of images, often more a painting than a movie, was critically well-received.
And more acclaim was now to come. With Mira Nair's Hysterical Blindness, based on Laura Cahill's play, Thurman acted as star and executive producer (having optioned the script after seeing the off-Broadway production). Here she played 80s Jersey girl Debby Miller, a beautiful woman but so emotionally needy she continually flies into outbursts that not only drive men away but eventually cause her to lose her sight. Ably backed by Juliette Lewis and Cassavetes stalwarts Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara, Uma went way overboard, dancing to Phil Collins and freaking out big-time. Some found it too much, most though found it deeply fascinating and eventually true to the story. It was certainly a courageous effort and deserved the Golden Globe it won.
Now came the biggest step yet, when she donned a Bruce Lee-style yellow track-suit and reunited with Tarantino for Kill Bill. Various joys were to be had even before production began. First, she turned down Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale, avenging that Bonfire Of The Vanities setback. Then Warren Beatty, originally set to play the titular Bill, asked that Uma, then pregnant with Levon, be dropped in favour of Winona Ryder or Gwyneth Paltrow. Tarantino, who has publicly stated that Thurman is a form of muse to him, decided to wait for his girl, and it was Beatty who left the project.
And what a project. Uma starred as The Bride, a retired assassin whose ex-boss (Bill) turns her wedding party into an abattoir and thus starts a quite startling cycle of murder and revenge. Tarantino pulled out all the stops, aping many of the greatest Asian action flicks to gore-flecked effect and remaining true to his stylish and well-written oeuvre. Far too long but apparently impossible to cut, the film would be released in two parts, ensuring that Thurman would be the world's most visible actress throughout 2003 and 2004. Her performance deserved it, too. Engaging in lengthy and brilliantly choreographed scraps with Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah and Vivica A Fox, as well as several hundred ninjas, she also managed to bring great humanity and pathos to her relationship with mentor and forner lover David Carradine. On top of this, as he had done in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino worshipped her with his camera, lending great weight to claims that she was truly the most beautiful actress in the world. It all made the Kill Bill phenomenon massively profitable, Volume One shirting two million home videos in its first 24 hours on sale. And it saw Thurman twice more nominated for Golden Globes.
Sadly, this visibility brought serious press attention when, in August 2003, while Thurman was in Vancouver filming Paycheck, Hawke (now also high profile after his Oscar nomination for Training Day) was spotted away from the Montreal set of Taking Lives with Canadian model Jen Perzow. The tabloids went wild and Thurman, who had never courted celebrity, was forced to suffer a very public humiliation. Eventually the story circulated that Hawke had simply reacted to a fear that his wife was acting as more than a muse for Tarantino, but this seemed unlikely. Then it was said that her desire to be movie star put too much pressure on the raltionship. Whatever, this marriage of seemingly well-suited independent spirits was over. Adding a further minor injury, her 3-year relationship with Lancombe, for whom she had launched the Miracle fragrance, was terminated. She and Hawke would file for divorce in 2004, and she would soon be spotted with hotel tycoon Andre Balazs.
Thurman, as ever, would soldier on. Between Kill Bills would come Paycheck, a John Woo take on a Philip K Dick tale, where Ben Affleck would play a computer wizard who's hired to illegally break vital corporate codes then has his memory erased to stop him blabbing. Sadly, he also has his memories of a love affair with biologist Uma erased, and the pair attempt to rekindle it as they battle against an evil corporation trying to steal a machine that can predict the future. Of course, being Woo the effects were startling and explosive, but Thurman still managed to bring depth to her character.
2005 was another busy year. It began with a reunion with John Travolta in Be Cool, a follow-up to Get Shorty. Penned by Elmore Leonard, it saw Travolta's gangster Chili Palmer switch his attentions from the movie industry to music. While he's trying to cut a deal over lunch with indie label owner James Woods, Woods is killed and Travolta moves in on Woods' widow, Uma, passing himself off as her new business partner. And on we go, the problems this time including pushy managers, Russian mobsters and gay bodyguards who want to make it as actors.
Following this would come Prime, where Thurman played a sophisticated divorcee and career woman in Manhattan who becomes the love object of a much younger Brooklyn artist who happens to be the son of Uma's therapist, Meryl Streep. Viewing love from all angles, it was a character-based comedy and one which Uma had stepped into at very short notice, when Sandra Bullock bailed out. She'd continue in the comedy vein by replacing Nicole Kidman as Ulla, the sexy Swedish secretary of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick as they plot their ill-fated theatrical disaster in The Producers: The Movie Musical. On the cards, there was also the long-delayed Accidental Husband where, applying for a marriage licence, she'd discover that she's somehow already hitched to Brendan Fraser. It was another great opportunity to once more prove to Brian De Palma that, yes, she could do funny.
One thing's for sure, having worked so hard to add ability to her undoubted looks and ludicrous gracefulness (co-star Kate Beckinsale once said of her "She gets up out of a chair and you want to applaud"), Uma Thurman will continue to impress in the occasional big-budget role, then impress some more in a series of indies. She has proved herself to be devoted to good work, away from the cult of celebrity that deadens so many of her peers. As her name suggests - the woman's a blessing.

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher (13.10.1925 - 08.04.2013) - British politic.

Margaret Hilda Thatcher was the 71st Prime Minister of Great Britain, the first and the only woman to hold that title. She was known as the “Iron Lady” for her strong-willed character and harsh style in politics. Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts) was born on October 13th, 1925, in Lincolnshire. She spent her childhood in Grantham. Her father was the owner of two grocery stores. He took active part in political and religious matters of Grantham. Margaret attended the local primary school and then she was appointed a scholarship and transferred to a more prestigious grammar school.
In 1943, she was accepted in Oxford, where she studied chemistry for four years. In 1947 she received a Bachelor’s degree in science. While still studying she became the chairman of Conservative Association of the university. After graduation she settled in Colchester, where she worked as a research chemist for one company. At the same time she joined the local Conservative Party and soon she was elected to represent the Conservatives for the safe Labour seat. She was rather fearless when making public speeches.
In 1950s she fully switched from scientific researches to political and legal practice. In 1959, after a difficult battle she was elected as a Member of Parliament. At that time she began actively attending the Institute of Economics, where she learned a lot about the welfare of state. In 1979, Thatcher won the general election and became the leader of the opposition. This was her first term as the Prime Minister of Great Britain. While holding the office, she won the reputation of “Iron lady”. Particularly, one Soviet newspaper called her that way in response to her anti-Soviet speech made in January of 1976. Over 11 years she was the head of the British cabinet. During this time she held a number of tough economic reforms and supported tax increases.
In 1982, she sent the British military ships to the Falkland Islands, which were occupied by Argentina. In several weeks the conflict was settled and Britain again took control over the islands. This was a key factor for the second victory of Conservative Party at the parliamentary elections in 1983. All in all, Margaret Thatcher won three elections. The third term as a Prime Minister was the most difficult for her. After she had taken a series of unpopular measures, she had no other choice than to leave the post. In 1992 Queen Elisabeth II granted her with the title of a baroness. During the last few years of her life the Iron Lady suffered from several minor strokes and senile dementia. She died on April 8th, 2013.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (16.10.1854 - 30.11.1900) - English writer.

Oscar Wilde was an outstanding Irish writer, poet, and simply one of the most popular playwrights of all times. The writer’s full name is Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wills Wilde. He was born on October the 18th, 1854, in Dublin in a reputable family. His father was a well-known doctor and an author of many scientific works. His mother was a fine lady, who wrote poems about Ireland. The boy’s childhood was directly connected with poetry and theatre, which had a huge impact on his future literary career and lifestyle. His primary education was mainly home-based. At the age of nine Oscar started attending the Enniskillen Royal School. As a teen he spent lots of time at his father’s summer villa. There he often played with a future novelist and short-story writer George Moore.
In 1871 he received a scholarship to attend the Trinity College in Dublin. In his free time he assisted his tutor in writing a book and that’s how he took up writing. In 1874 he entered the Magdalen College. After that he unsuccessfully tried to join the Oxford Union. Unsure of his next step, he decided to expand his poetic efforts. In 1881, he released the first collection of poems. He was only 27 years old then. His works were generally well received by public. In 1884 he married the daughter of a wealthy counsel Horace Lloyd. The couple had two sons. By the 1890s his life was full of public scandals. The first one was connected with the appearance of his novel “The Portrait of Dorian Gray”, which was found to be immoral. The second one was connected with his drama “Solome”, which was banned by the British censors.
However, the biggest scandal was yet to come. In 1895 Oscar Wilde was accused of homosexuality. To defend himself against public accusations he sued his closest friend’s father. Alfred Douglas actually separated Wilde from his family and lived spending his money. However, at the court he spoke as a prosecution witness. The writer was officially convicted of immorality and sentenced to prison. His name immediately disappeared from the theater playbill and was no longer mentioned. During the two years that he spent in prison Wilde wrote two outstanding literary works: “De Profundis” and “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”. Having changed his name, he left England. One of the most brilliant and sophisticated aesthetes of the 19th century spent the last years of his life in poverty and loneliness. Oscar Wilde died on November 30th, 1900, in Paris.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (24.09.1896 - 21.12.1940) - American writer

Francis Scott Fitzgerald was an internationally recognized American writer and novelist. The future writer was born on September 24, 1896. His family came from Ireland from a wealthy Catholic background.
Thanks to his mother’s wealthy relatives Francis had the opportunity to study in prestigious educational institutions. As a child he attended the Academy of St. Paul. Later, he studied at Princeton. As a student he was fond of football and writing. The latest hobby brought him several victories at the university competition. In 1919 he was invited to New York to work in the advertising.
While volunteering for the army he met his future wife Zelda S. She was from the very aristocratic background and her parents were against her relations with average reporter. Perhaps, that was one of the reasons why Francis started working hard to gain fame in his literary career. They were already engaged with Zelda when he decided to write a remake of his manuscript “Romantic Egoist”. After it was published, it had a tremendous success.
Only after becoming a well-to-do writer and highly-paid journalist, he was allowed to marry Zelda - the daughter of a well-known judge from Alabama. In fact, Zelda served as a prototype of his main heroine Rosalind. Becoming a famous reporter, Francis now lived a public life. Together with his wife they participated in eccentric parties. They often arranged their own wealthy parties with excessive alcohol and fun.
At the same time he continued writing for posh and glossy magazines. His first book was soon followed by the second one “The Beautiful and Damned”. It was a story about a painful marriage of two talented and attractive representatives of bohemia. In 1925 while visiting Paris the writer completes and publishes one of his most famous books “The Great Gatsby” - the novel which explores the ideas of social decadence and former idealism.
However, the good times quickly came to an end. His wife Zelda soon started suffering from schizophrenia and gradually she went mad. Francis started drinking a lot and experienced a painful crisis.
His pain was well described in partially autobiographical novel “Tender Is The Night” (1934). This book didn’t show any signs of success in the USA, so he decided to try his talent at screenwriting in Hollywood. There he met Sheila Graham, who became his last love. The writer died at the age of forty-four having a heart attack.

Henry Ford

Henry Ford (30.07.1863 - 07.04.1947) - American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company.

Henry Ford was born on 30 July 1863 near Detroit. His father, William, was born in Ireland and his mother, Mary, was born in Michigan. Her parents were Belgian immigrants. Mary had adoptive parents because her birth parents died. She was adopted by the O’Herns family. They were the neighbors of Mary. There were five children in the family of William and Mary: Henry, Margaret, Robert, William and Jane.
When Henry was young he received a pocket watch from his father. At the age of fifteen he took to pieces and reassembled the timepieces of his pals many times and they knew him as a watch repairman.
In 1876 Henry’s mother died and he felt low. His father wanted him to go round the farm but Henry abhorred farm work.
Three years later Henry Ford began to work as an apprentice machinist in Detroit. In 1882 he arrived in Dearborn and began to work for Westinghouse company where he maintained steam engines.
In 1888 Ford married Clara Ala Bryant. They had their only son: Edsel Ford.
Three years after marriage Henry became an engineer in the Edison Illuminating Company. In 1893 he became Chief Engineer. Since then Henry Ford started to work on gasoline engine. Consequently in 1896 he developed a self-propelled vehicle which was called the Ford Quadricycle. Afterwards Ford created different improvements for his invention.
In 1896 Henry Ford made the acquaintance of Thomas Edison who endorsed the experiments of Ford. With the assistance of Edison Henry Ford created a new vehicle in 1898. Later he left his job and established the Detroit Automobile Company in 1899. But Henry Ford was not satisfied because the vehicles produced there were of a lower quality and expensive. Eventually the enterprise was not successful and it was abolished in 1901.
Ten months later encouraged by C. Harold Wills Henry Ford developed a 26-horsepower automobile which was successfully tested. As a result stockholders of the Detroit Automobile Company founded the Henry Ford Company in 1901 where Henry Ford was a chief engineer. In 1902 he left the company because a new consultant was hired there. Afterwards the company was renamed. It was called the Cadillac Automobile Company.
Cooperating with Tom Cooper, who was a racing cyclist, Henry Ford created the 80+ horsepower racer “999”. Consequently Henry established contact with his old friend Alexander Y. Malcomson with whom he founded a company “Ford & Malcomson, Ltd.” to produce automobiles.
In 1908 Henry Ford designed a new automobile called Model T. The vehicle was inexpensive and simple to drive. Moreover the steering wheel was on the left. This car was a great success.
In 1926 Henry Ford decided to create a new model because the sales of Model T were slow. He worked on technical improvements and his son designed the body. This model was introduced in 1927. As the Model T, Model A was a great success.
From 1918 to 1943 his son, Edsel, was a president of Ford Motor Company. In 1943 he died of cancer and his father became a president again but his health left much to be desired. Henry Ford was a president of Ford Motor Company until the end of war.
Henry Ford died in 1947 at the age of 83. He was interred in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.

Gerold Ford

Gerold Ford (born 14.07.1913) - American president.

Gerald Rudolph Ford , Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., renamed after adoption) was the fortieth (1973–1974) Vice President and the thirty-eighth (1974–1977) President of the United States. He remains the only individual to serve as President without ever having been elected to either the presidency or vice presidency. Instead, following the resignation of Spiro Agnew he was nominated as Vice President by Richard Nixon and approved by both houses of Congress (not just the Senate, as is the procedure for Cabinet Members, Supreme Court justices, and most others), in line with the 25th Amendment. When Nixon resigned on noon of August 9, 1974 Ford assumed the presidency.
Along with his own vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, he is one of only two people to have been appointed Vice President rather than elected. As of 2005, he is the oldest living former President. On July 14, 2004, he became the second former U.S. President (after Ronald Reagan) to reach his 91st birthday. At present, Ford is the second longest lived president in U.S. history. Should Ford live to or beyond November 11, 2006, he will become the longest lived U.S. president. He also has the second longest retirement among presidents at 28 years, behind Herbert Hoover.
Ford was born to Leslie Lynch King and Dorothy Ayer Gardner in Omaha, Nebraska. His parents divorced two years after he was born, and his mother remarried to Gerald Ford, after whom he was renamed after being adopted by his step-father. He and Democrat Bill Clinton are the only two U.S. Presidents to have been adopted. Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and starred as a center playing American football for the University of Michigan. A three-year letterman, Ford helped the Wolverines to undefeated seasons in 1932 and 1933 and was voted the team's most valuable player in 1934. (His number 48 jersey has since been retired by the school.) After graduating the following spring, he turned down contract offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers of the National Football League. While at the Yale Law School, Ford joined a group of students led by R. Douglas Stuart, Jr. as they signed a petition to enforce the 1939 Neutrality Act. This petition was circulated nationally and was the inspiration for America First, a group determined to keep America out of World War II. Ford graduated from law school in 1941, having coached football and boxing part time to pay for school. Ford joined the Boy Scouts as a child and attained the highest rank of Eagle Scout. He always regarded this as one of his proudest accomplishments even after attaining the White House. He is quoted for saying, "I am the first Eagle Scout President!"
Ford in uniform, 1945In April 1942 Ford joined the U.S. Naval Reserve receiving a commission as an ensign. After an orientation program at Annapolis, he became a physical fitness instructor at a pre- flight school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In the spring of 1943 he began service in the light aircraft carrier USS Monterey (CVL-26). He was first assigned as athletic director and gunnery division officer, then as assistant navigator with the Monterey, which took part in most of the major operations in the South Pacific, including Truk, Saipan, and the Philippines. His closest call with death came not as a result of enemy fire, however, but during a vicious typhoon in the Philippine Sea in December 1944. He came within inches of being swept overboard while the storm raged. The ship, which was severely damaged by the storm and a resulting fire, had to be taken out of service. Ford spent the remainder of the war ashore and was discharged as a lieutenant commander in February 1946.
Ford was a member of the House of Representatives for 24 years from 1949 to 1973, and became Minority Leader of the Republican Party in the House. Ford was very popular with the voters in his district and was always re-elected with 60% margins. He always stayed in close touch with the people of Grand Rapids. During his first campaign, he visited farmers and promised he would work on their farms and milk their cows if elected - a promise which he apparently fulfilled. Ford won an award in 1961 as a "Congressman's Congressman" that praised his committee work on military budgets. During his tenure, Ford was chosen to serve on the Warren Commission, a special task force set up to investigate the causes of, and quell rumors regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Commission eventually concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in killing the President, a conclusion sometimes disparaged by conspiracy theorists as the "Lone Nut Theory". Today Ford is the only surviving member of the Commission, and continues to stand behind its conclusions. During the eight years (1965–1973) he served as Minority Leader, Ford won many friends in the House due to his fair leadership and inoffensive personality. He often attacked the "Great Society" programs of President Lyndon Johnson as unneeded or wasteful. He made a speech attacking Johnson's Vietnam war policies called "Why are we pulling our punches in Vietnam?". Ford charged that the President was meddling in the war effort and not letting the military do its job. Ford appeared on a televised series of press conferences with famed Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen that became very popular. The two men proposed Republican alternatives to President Johnson's policies. Many in the press jokingly called this "The Ev and Jerry Show". Ford also led an effort to impeach William O. Douglas, who was a Justice on the United States Supreme Court. Ford made a speech charging Douglas with criminal activities and with promoting rebellion in his writings.
After Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned during Richard Nixon's presidency, on October 10, 1973, Nixon nominated Ford to take Agnew's place, under the 25th Amendment - the first time it was applied. The United States Senate voted 92 to 3 to confirm Ford on November 27, 1973 and on December 6, the House confirmed him 387 to 35. Ford had long been one of President Nixon's most outspoken supporters (someone joked once that "He is one of the few people who not only admires Nixon, but actually likes him!"). Ford traveled widely as Vice President and made many speeches defending the embattled President. He cited the many achievements of President Nixon and dismissed Watergate as a media event and a tragic sideshow.
Vice President Ford is sworn in as the 38th President of the United States by Chief Justice Warren Burger as Mrs. Ford looks on.When Nixon then resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal on August 9, 1974, Ford assumed the presidency, proclaiming that "our long national nightmare is over". On August 20 Ford nominated former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to fill the Vice Presidency he had vacated, again under the 25th Amendment.
One month later, Ford gave Nixon a pardon for any crimes he may or may not have committed while President or indeed anything else he might have done — a move that many historians believe cost him the election in 1976.
The economy was a great concern during the Ford administration. In response to rising inflation, Ford went before the American public on television in October 1974 and asked them to "whip inflation now" (WIN); as part of this program, he urged people to wear "WIN" buttons. However, most people recognized this as simply a public relations gimmick without offering any effective means of solving the underlying problem. At the time inflation was around 7%, a relatively modest number in retrospect, but still enough to discourage investment and push capital overseas and into government bonds.
The economic focus began to change as the country sank into a mild recession, and in March 1975, Ford and Congress signed into law income tax rebates to help boost the economy.
In the aftermath of Watergate, the Democrats scored major gains in both the House and the Senate in the 1974 elections. Ford and Congress battled over legislation, with Ford vetoing scores of Democrat-supported bills.
President Ford, left, and USSR's Leonid Brezhnev meet at the Vladivostok summit negotiations, 1974Ford also faced a foreign policy crisis with the Mayaguez Incident. In May 1975, shortly after the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia, Cambodians seized an American merchant ship, the Mayaguez, in international waters. Ford dispatched Marines to rescue the crew, but the Marines landed on the wrong island and met unexpectedly stiff resistance just as, unknown to the US, the Mayaguez sailors were being released. In all phases of the operation, fifty service men were wounded and forty-one killed, including three men believed to have been left behind alive and subsequently executed and twenty-three Air Force personnel killed earlier while en route to the staging area at Utapao, Thailand. It is believed that approximately sixty Khmer Rouge soldiers were killed out of a land and sea force of about 300.
Ford's presidency also saw the final withdrawal of American personnel from Vietnam, in 'Operation Frequent Wind'. On 29 April and the morning of 30 April 1975 the American embassy in Saigon was evacuated, amidst chaotic scenes.
At the 1980 Republican National Convention, Ford was nearly nominated to return to service as Vice President under nominee Ronald Reagan. On the day a Vice President was to be nominated, however, Reagan could not convince Ford to join him on the ticket and instead chose George H. W. Bush, who had rivaled him for the presidential nomination. While attending the 2000 Republican National Convention, Ford suffered two mild strokes, but has subsequently recovered. He was hospitalized twice for dizziness in 2003.
Ford has remained relatively active as a former President, and during his post-presidential years he continued to make appearances at events of historical and ceremonial significance to the nation, such as presidential inaugurals and memorial services. In 1981 he opened the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. During the 1990s and early 2000s he remained America's most active "elder statesman" president, as Ronald Reagan became unable to attend functions in his final years due to the advancement of Alzheimer's disease. Ford has remained an avid fan of Michigan football and delivered a videotaped message before Michigan and Ohio State played their 100th game in 2003. In 1999, the School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan was renamed the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy in honor of Ford's lifetime of public service. Ford was also in a brief scene on The Simpsons as Homer Simpson's new neighbor from across the street (the house he bought was previously owned by George H.W. Bush.) Ford invites Homer to his house to eat nachos, drink beer, and watch football. As they head towards the house, as Homer is telling Ford how they will get to be great friends, they trip on the curb at the same time and exclaim, "D'oh!"
Ford has been outspoken on a variety of political issues confronting the nation since leaving office. Although he had taken a more centrist-to-conservative stance on the matter while campaigning for president in 1976, Ford has emerged as a leading pro-choice Republican on abortion rights; he has been an advisor to Republicans for Choice, and told Larry King in an interview that he shared in his wife's outspoken support of reproductive rights. Ford has also endorsed civil unions for gay couples, and urged Republicans not support the impeachment President William J. Clinton in the late 1990s.
Recently, there has been ongoing speculation regarding Ford's health. Though he gave an interview to Larry King in June 2004, attended the funeral of former President Reagan, and spoke at ceremonies commemorating the 30th anniversary of his swearing-in in August 2004, Ford has appeared increasingly frail – and this may have caused him to cut back on his formerly busy schedule. He was, for the first time in his political life, unable to attend a Republican National Convention when he didn't attend the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. In addition, Ford was the only living former president not to attend ceremonies for the opening of the Bill Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Former president Bill Clinton told Larry King in an interview that Ford had confided that he now feels uncomfortable when flying in aircraft. He was the only living former president not to attend the second inauguration of President George W. Bush in 2005.
When New York Republican Governor George Pataki named the living former presidents as honorary members of the board rebuilding the World Trade Center, he was unaware of Ford's health decline in the recent months.
In 2003, Ford's death was incorrectly announced by CNN when his pre-written obituary (along with those of several other famous figures) was inadvertently published on CNN's web site due to a lapse in password protection.

Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford (born 13.07.1942) - American actor.

As we all know, the biggest Hollywood stars are amongst the highest-paid people on the planet. Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, Jim Carrey, all receive fees of over $20 million for a single picture, often with a hefty slice of the film's gross thrown in. This is because their names are a guarantee of sorts. Millions will go see a Hanks film simply because it's Hanks, because Hanks makes good films, because Hanks films are so often An Event.
But none of these guys can yet hold a candle to the grand-daddy of all current cinematic superstars. Harrison Ford is the richest of them all. He has starred in no fewer than 4 of the 10 top grossing movies of all time, 8 of the top 50. His movies have grossed nearly $6 billion, and this without taking into account inflation - you could add a few more billion by updating the takes of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. Even at the age of 60, Ford was still taking $25 million per picture, with 20% of gross on top. Financially speaking, he's the biggest there ever was.
There are good reasons for this. In most of his movies, he is America personified. America believes itself to be a good guy. Troubled but good. America is decent with high moral standards. America doesn't start fights, but woe betide you if you push it around. It may not start fights, but it certainly finishes them. And this is Harrison Ford's appeal. He's not a bash-'em-up superhero like Arnie or Stallone. His characters don't want trouble, they don't like it, they might even be scared of it, but when pushed to extremes they come through, always victorious.
That's Ford's appeal, but it's in no way an adequate summation of the man and his talents. He's of course best known for his action heroes, yet over four decades he's played any number of different characters. And, while he's had it, he's used his power well. A pain-in-the-ass perfectionist, he's ensured that very, very few of the movies he's headlined have been duds. The guy works hard, he's a trooper. A super-trooper perhaps, but a trooper nonetheless.
He was born on the 13th of July, 1942, in Chicago. His Irish-Catholic father, Christopher, worked in advertising while his Russian-Jewish mother, Dorothy, looked after Harrison and his brother Terence. As a kid, Harrison was very shy, sensing that he was different, not like the other kids. At school in suburban Des Plaines, just north-west of Chicago, he was bullied continually for not fitting in, not craving popularity or success. Each day, the hard kids would take the future Indiana Jones to the edge of the road where the playground sloped down, beat him up and roll him down the hill. He would never fight back. Though furious inside (an anger he would keep for years), he kept up a Gandhi-like policy of non-violence, enraging his tormentors even more.
Eventually, he moved on to Maine Township High School in Park Ridge, at the north end of Chicago proper (Hillary Rodham would later attend the establishment). Here he continued to be uninvolved. He wasn't good at sports, never rose above a C-average in class. Nothing pointed to his future success, except a minor interest in radio broadcasting. His was the first voice heard on the High School-based WMTH-FM.
Fortunately, he still made college, as the faculty advisor at Maine knew the director of admissions at Ripon College in Wisconsin. So, having graduated from High School in 1960, off Ford went to study English. How he hated it. Growing his hair, as befitted a fan of the burgeoning post-Beat counter-culture, he found the place claustrophobically conservative.
After a while, he began to show symptoms of clinical depression. He'd sleep for days on end, finding it more and more difficult to raise himself. Once he recalls waking after a 3-day nap and deciding to attend a class. Everything moved in slow motion. He got to the class and, unable to turn the handle of the classroom door, he turned around and went back to bed.
This went on throughout his 3-year term. Work went undone, classes were ignored. "The kindest word to describe my performance," he said later "was Sloth". A few days before graduation, the authorities realised what he'd been up to and withheld his degree.
Two good things had happened during his time at Ripon, though. First, he met and fell for Mary Marquardt. They would marry in 1964, the year after he left college, and produce two sons - Benjamin, later a chef, and Willard, later a history teacher. And, in his last year, he gave acting a go, trying out summer stock with the Belfry Players. At one point starring as Mac the Knife in The Threepenny Opera, he discovered that this was something he could do, something to pursue. He liked the idea of working intensely with a group of people for a short time, then moving on to the next intense experience. It was a chance to lead "many lives". Besides, the director had told him he'd get him work if he ever went to California.
With hopes high, Ford took Mary west in his old Volkswagon bus, and began to work and study at the Laguna Playhouse. He also managed to achieve that famous scar on his chin. Attempting to belt up while driving, he lost control of the car. In his later movies, it would be explained away in various ways. The third Indiana Jones film had him cutting his chin with a whip when a kid. Working Girl saw him claim that, when trying to pierce his own ear as a teen, he'd fainted and smashed his chin on the toilet. Though he bashed his chin, he did manage to save his ass, avoiding the Vietnam draft by applying to be a conscientious objector and spinning such a tale about his religious beliefs that the draft board never bothered him again.
At this time, the big studios were running young talent programmes, so in 1965 Harrison got himself an interview with a casting director at Columbia. The usual questions were asked, the usual "We'll call you" ending arrived. Ford left the office, thinking nothing would come of it. Then, before he took the lift down, he decided he needed to pee and, as he exited the urinal afterwards, he saw the casting director's assistant running down the corridor after him. Did he want a contract? $150 a week OK? It was, and Harrison was in. But he knew they didn't want him that badly, that if he hadn't stopped to pee the assistant would never have run down the street after him.
Now came his feature film debut, in Dead Heat On A Merry-Go-Round, a smart crime drama involving an airport robbery and featuring James Coburn. Ford appeared briefly as a bell-hop, his first words in movies being "Paging Mr Jones...Paging Mr Jones". Next came another tiny role, as a hippy in the Jack Lemmon comedy Luv. There were also TV spots in The Virginian and Ironside. He'd be credited as Harrison J. Ford to avoid confusion with the silent-screen actor that shared his name - in reality there's no J.
But things were not really going well. Ford was kicked off the Columbia programme and picked up by Universal in 1967. It didn't get better. There were more small roles, in the James Caan-starring Civil War flick Journey To Shiloh, in Antonioni's hippy classic Zabriskie Point (Ford's part was cut, but you can still see him flash by in the jail sequence), and Getting Straight, a very contemporary piece where Elliott Gould rails against college conservatism and the students riot.
But the powers that be had a limited view of his face and talents. He was either cast in cowboy roles, as a hippy or as the suspicious looking kid who's later found not to have committed the crime after all. This later became very obvious when he was cast in both The FBI and Gunsmoke as characters exactly the same as ones he'd played in the same shows very recently. No one remembered, no one seemed to care. The laziness and carelessness hit this perfectionist hard.
Then again, the studio authorities had always found him difficult. After Dead Heat%u2026 an exec tried to give him a lesson in humility. He told him he got the lines right but he had no star quality. Check out Tony Curtis in HIS first role, the exec said. He's a grocery clerk but you KNOW he's a movie star. "I thought the point was you were supposed to think he was a grocery clerk", countered Ford, quite reasonably. "Get the f*** out of my office!", countered the exec.
Another exec would take it into his head that Harrison was the new Elvis. He even sent him down to the studio's barber with a photograph of the King so they'd get it just right. Oh, the humiliation…
This went on right up until he found fame. Years later, he had to play a biology teacher who at one point gives a lecture on spiders. He bought himself a tarantula, learned its ways, how to handle it. He took it onto the set, thinking it would add depth to the scene, help the director. The director's response? "Get that thing in a f***ing can and get it the hell out of here!"
Times were tough. Right from his arrival in Hollywood, the parts hadn't come but the kids had. And the family had moved into an $18,500 house in the Hollywood Hills that had to be paid for. Fortunately, Ford had a lucrative sideline. Something had had to change, and it happened in an antique shop. Ford was there with his friend Earl McGrath, when McGrath decided to buy two tables at $1100 each. Don't do it, says Ford, I'll make you two for $200 a piece. McGrath bought Ford $400 worth of tools to do the job, and waited. It never would be done, though years later Ford did present him with an antique table.
What McGrath had inadvertently done was set Ford up in business. Very soon, a recording engineer friend of Ford's told him that Brazilian composer Sergio Mendes wanted a studio built. Harrison applied for the job and, such was the intelligence of his suggestions, he got the job. Mendes never asked if he'd done anything like it before. So Ford ended up sat on the roof, hammering away and, in his spare moments, devouring carpentry books he'd taken out of Encino Library.
Incredibly, he did a great job. Recommended by Mendes and using his own cinema contacts, he kept the work coming. He worked for his friend Joan Didion, made a deck for Sally Kellerman, who dubbed him "Carpenter to the Stars". He still went to parties, met with producers and directors, still took the odd role, but carpentry meant he wasn't beholden to the studios, he didn't have to keep doing bad work. He'd continue with it right up until Star Wars, ten years in all.
Before this, though, there would be flirtations with fame. In 1972, Fred Roos, a producer who believed in his abilities, got him cast in a new picture by a young director named George Lucas. Called American Graffiti, it concerned one crazy summer night in the lives of High School graduates about to step into the big, bad world. Newcomers Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard were to star, with Paul LeMat as an older friend who loves to cruise the strip and drag-race his car. Harrison was to be Bob Falfa, a renegade hot-rodder who takes LeMat on and is beating him when he turns his car over (the car being the same '55 Chevy they used in James Taylor's Two Lane Blacktop).
Ford was offered $485 a week for American Graffiti, and turned it down as he was making twice that as a carpenter. They upped it to $500, so he took it. After all, it was a small budget. So small that Ford found himself berated for taking two doughnuts one lunch-time.
Other than this, it was a great experience. For the first time, Ford found himself listened to, rather than accused of being difficult. They wanted him to cut his hair to stand out from the other kids. He refused, but suggested a white cowboy hat. Lucas agreed. Then Lucas wanted expand Ford's role by having him sing a song. He was a friend of Don Everly, so he tried an Everly Brothers song. No good. Then he tried Some Enchanted Evening. This was REALLY bad, he got the words wrong and everything. Everyone hated it. Except Lucas, who added it to the movie's final cut.
American Graffiti would be a huge hit in 1973, making $55 million on a budget of $750,000, the biggest profit margin in history. George Lucas was on his way. Ford still had struggling to do. Off he went to audition for Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. Here, troubled surveillance expert Gene Hackman is hired by corporate big-wig Robert Duvall to spy on a couple. Turns out they're Duvall's young wife and her lover, played by Frederic Forrest - and, much to Hackman's consternation, they're going to get murdered.
Harrison was up for the Forrest role, but didn't get it. Instead, he was told Coppola would write a part for him. He became Duvall's sinister assistant Martin Stett. Deciding that his character ought to be gay (not something often seen in movies then), he went out and bought a pool table-green flannel suit for $900. On seeing him, Coppola asked what the hell was going on. Ford explained and Coppola loved it, Stett becoming a shady, dangerous figure in the background. The Conversation would turn out to be one of the Seventies' finest movies.
Next came Judgement: The Court Martial Of Lieutenant William Calley. The part of Calley was already taken, but Ford was told he could have any other part. Typically, he chose the most difficult, as Frank Crowder, a young enlisted man who's principal witness against Calley and traumatised by the experience.
After this came the epic Dynasty, based on a James Michener book concerning the battles of a pioneering 1800s family on the Ohio frontier, Harrison playing alongside Sarah Miles, Stacy Keach and Amy Irving. Then there was The Possessed, an Exorcist rip-off intended to launch a series starring James Franciscus. The demons here were bothering a girls' school, Ford playing a science teacher who's having an affair with one of the pupils (as he would, two decades later, in What Lies Beneath).
But Harrison didn't seem to be going anywhere. For the first ten years of his career he'd seldom found what he'd wanted, that intensity of working with tight groups of creative people. He was still, basically, a carpenter to the stars. Yet this, amazingly, proved his making. One day, he was building a doorway in Coppola's HQ when George Lucas passed by. Noting this waste of talent, he asked Ford to come and read for a little movie he was putting together - Star Wars.
Lucas wasn't thinking of Ford for the part of Han Solo, cynical space smuggler turned reluctant hero. He preferred Kurt Russell, or Nick Nolte, or Christopher Walken. But as Ford read for the other parts, Lucas realised he had his Solo. So Harrison took his chances in a galaxy far, far away, and the rest is history.
Kind of. There was to be yet more work before Harrison became a bankable lead. For a start, there was Apocalypse Now. Having liked his work on The Conversation, Coppola gave Ford a small role in his Vietnam/ Heart Of Darkness epic (as Colonel G. Lucas - ho ho ho). It was a legendarily tough shoot, and the movie would not be released for another three years, but Harrison did meet Coppola's young assistant, Melissa Mathison. She'd soon write The Black Stallion for Coppola's Zoetrope company, and then pen ET for Spielberg. Ford's marriage to Mary Marquardt, meanwhile, was falling apart.
It was a strange, up-and-down time. After Star Wars came Heroes, a comedy drama where Henry "The Fonz" Winkler played a disturbed Vietnam vet who plans to open a worm farm for fisherman, along with some of his vet buddies, including Harrison. Then there was Force Ten From Navarone where he played the leader of a mismatched team sent to blow up a bridge in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. The location shooting proved more than his marriage could stand. "The cinema separated us," Harrison would say "and I will never forgive it for that". He and Mary would divorce in 1979.
That same year Apocalypse Now was finally released, as was More American Graffiti, penned by Lucas, in which Ford had a brief cameo. Then there was Robert Aldrich's comedy western The Frisco Kid, where Gene Wilder played a Polish rabbi trying to reach his San Francisco synagogue. On the way across the west, he meets and befriends bank robber Ford and the pair endure the usual Wilder-style adventures. The Seventies would close for Harrison with his first romantic lead role, in Hanover Street. Here he played a US pilot in wartime London who falls for nurse Lesley-Anne Down. When he's shot down behind enemy lines with another guy, he comes to realise that the fellow is actually his lover's husband.
The Eighties set Harrison on an incredible run of success. First he returned to Han Solo, this time captured by Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. Then came his second franchise, with Raiders Of The Lost Ark, again written by Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg. It was an absolute classic, an incredibly exciting tale of spies, treasure hunters and evil Nazis, with a real thirties feel. And Ford was tremendous as Indiana Jones, all whips and wisecracks. He was now, at last, a huge star.
And, as with his earlier Columbia contract, it might so easily never have happened. Tom Selleck was Spielberg's first choice, but he was committed to Magnum PI and so missed out. Nick Nolte turned it down - meaning he could have been both Han Solo AND Indiana Jones.
There was flukey greatness within the movie, too. Remember the scene where Jones is approached by an enormous eastern warrior who tries to intimidate him with a complex routine with his huge scimitar, only for Indiana to pull out his gun and shoot him with that "Oh, for God's sake" expression on his face? That was supposed to be a big fight sequence but, because Harrison was suffering from diarrhoea that day, he tried something quicker. The crew laughed - it was in.
Many of the action scenes, though, were exactly as intended. Ford was, in fact, dragged behind that truck for real. When asked if he was worried that it was dangerous, he said no - if it was really dangerous they'd have filmed more of the movie first. He would smash up his left knee quite badly, nevertheless, to add to the broken teeth he received when he fell on his gun during a stunt on TV. Later, on The Fugitive, his right knee would get it. By 2002, he had also herniated two discs and separated his shoulder. It's a hard life, saving the world.
Harrison's next major part, in 1982, was to have been in Spielberg's ET as the school principal, but Spielberg thought his presence would be too distracting, so cut him out. Ford contented himself with, the next year, marrying ET's writer, Melissa Mathison. The pair would be together until 2001, producing another two kids - Malcolm and Georgia.
Who cared about ET anyway? Ford was back immediately in an infinitely superior sci-fi piece, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Here he was brilliantly focused and harassed as Deckard, the man charged with hunting down Rutger Hauer and his crew of renegade replicants. It wasn't a big money-spinner but it was one of the best movies of the decade.
After this, it was on to ever-greater heights. First he was imprisoned by Jabba The Hutt in another Star Wars episode, The Return Of The Jedi (his marriage to Princess Leia was cut from the end). Then he got involved with a particularly unpleasant thuggee cult in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, the finest of the Indie movies.
There were, of course, those who believed Ford couldn't cut it away from the Han Solo and Indiana Jones characters. He proved them wrong instantly with Peter Weir's Witness. Here he played Philadelphia cop John Book who must protect a young Amish boy who's the only witness to a mob murder. Problematically for Book, he must enter the boy's other-worldly community, all the while waiting for the killers to come.
It was another major hit, with Ford Oscar-nominated for the first and only time. But he now needed a challenge and found one by sticking with Weir for The Mosquito Coast. Here he played eccentric inventor Allie Fox, who takes his wife (Helen Mirren) and son (River Phoenix) off in search of paradise in the Central American jungle. Conflicts, naturally, arise. It was a thoughtful film, with Harrison putting in his best non-action performance since The Conversation (being Golden Globe-nominated for his pains), but not a smash. It remains, however, one of Ford's personal favourites. His friends, meanwhile, noting how Fox takes his family away from civilisation and refuses to live amidst the rat-race, reckoned the movie could have been called The Harrison Ford Story.
Staying away from action, next he was off to Paris to work with Roman Polanski on Frantic. This was an excellent paranoid thriller, with Ford as a doctor who, visiting Paris for a conference, has his wife mysteriously disappear while showering. He can't speak French, the authorities won't help, so he has to scour the capital's punky, drug-ridden underground himself.
Next he tried comedy, very successfully, with Mike Nichols' Working Girl. Here ripped-off secretary Melanie Griffith pretends to be her boss (Sigourney Weaver) and teams up with financial broker Harrison to push through a big deal. Then Weaver returns...
1989 saw Harrison take up his whip once more in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, this time with Sean Connery as his father, and former co-star River Phoenix as the young Indy. But The Mosquito Coast and Frantic had given Ford a taste for more difficult roles. Turning down the part of CIA agent Jack Ryan in Tom Clancy's The Hunt For Red October, he chose instead to play Rusty Sabich in the excellent Presumed Innocent. Here he was a prosecutor charged with the murder of his lover, Greta Scaachi, having to find the real killer AND deal with his wife, Bonnie Bedelia.
Presumed Innocent, like many of Ford's roles, saw him as a normal guy under abnormal pressure. His next picture took him even further down this route. Returning to Mike Nichols for Regarding Henry, he played a selfish lawyer shot in a hold-up. With a bullet in his brain, he loses all memory and must re-learn everything, particularly his role as husband and father - in the process becoming a far nicer person.
1992 saw him return to action movies and cement his position as Hollywood's number one star. Having turned down the part of Jack Ryan once, he now took it on with Patriot Games (Alec Baldwin having dropped out, not liking the script). Here, while in London, Ryan interferes with an IRA assassination attempt, bringing the wrath of IRA operative Sean Bean down on himself and his family (Anne Archer and Thora Birch). In the film's original trailer was the line "There's never been a terrorist attack on American soil" - it was left out of the theatrical release because it sounded like a dare.
The next year brought an immense hit with The Fugitive, where he reprised David Janssen's TV role as Dr Richard Kimble, accused of murdering his wife and trying to find the real, one-armed killer while avoiding the attentions of marshal Tommy Lee Jones. With extraordinarily spectacular SFX, it was one of the finest action flicks of recent years, earning Jones an Oscar and Ford a second Golden Globe nomination.
Next up was Clear And Present Danger, his second Jack Ryan movie. Here he found himself promoted to Deputy Director of Intelligence and caught up in a horrible political tangle involving Colombian drug cartels and undercover government operatives. Eventually, he must go down to South America himself and rescue a bunch of imprisoned agents.
Now stepping regularly away from the action genre, he tried his hand at romantic comedy with Sabrina, a remake of the Bogart/Holden/Audrey Hepburn classic. Here he was straight-laced businessman Linus Larrabee, who's keen to have his waistrel brother Greg Kinnear marry the daughter of a rival corporate type, thus creating a mighty empire. So, when Kinnear falls for Sabrina, the chauffeur's daughter (Julia Ormond), Linus decides to get her out of the picture by romancing her himself - with predictable complications.
It was during filming Sabrina that Harrison took to the air. He'd begun riding big motorcycles at the age of 45, explaining that he'd finally begun to trust himself (well, the scar on his chin must have been an everyday reminder of irresponsibility). Now Sabrina's director Sydney Pollack began to goad him into flying his own plane. He'd already got a handle on piloting while at college in 1962 but, at $15 an hour, it was too expensive. Years later, he'd picked up more rudiments by sitting upfront when flying in Gulfstream jets, watching the captain. Now he asked his pilot to obtain an instructor's licence and show him the ropes. Before long, Harrison (or rather November 1128 Sierra) was himself flying a Gulfstream, as well as a Beaver, a Bonanza and a Bell LongRanger helicopter. Lucky for some that he was. In 2000, he used his helicopter to save 20-year-old Sarah George when she was dying of dehydration on Table Mountain, near Jackson Hole in Wyoming, where Ford has owned a ranch since 1985.
Sabrina won Ford another Golden Globe nomination, and he moved on to The Devil's Own. Brad Pitt was already onboard, as a young IRA terrorist, in America to buy guns and staying with an older New York cop who comes to suspect something is up. The script that attracted Pitt had him as a soldier and freedom fighter, the movie being something of an advert for the IRA. With Harrison onboard, that changed. With his motto "There is no limit to Better", he set about changing things, much to Pitt's chagrin. Brad even considered walking out, claiming the movie was no longer the one he'd signed on for, but he was threatened with a $63 million suit if he did. In the end he just slagged it off afterwards.
Neither Sabrina nor The Devil's Own set the box-office alight. Harrison needed a smash to maintain his pre-eminent position, and he found it in Air Force One. Here (at last) he played the US President, but a Pres with a difference. This one's an ex-soldier still more than capable of kicking ass when pushed around. And pushed around he is, when Gary Oldman and a gang of ruffians from some ex-Soviet state hijack his airplane and demand the release of their beloved General Redek (Jurgen Prochnow). Sadly for them, they believe Ford has escaped in a safety-pod. Even more sadly for them, he's actually hiding in the hold, preparing to boot them into oblivion. With Oldman on top psychotic form and Ford at his most heroically battered, the movie was another monster.
Harrison ended the Nineties with two medium successes. In Six Days, Seven Nights he played a drunken pilot who, while flying journalist Anne Heche to a job, crashes on a remote South Seas island. As they hate each other, survival is tough - but things change%u2026 After this came the emotionally charged Random Hearts. Here Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas both lose their loved ones in a plane crash. Being a cop, and heartbroken, Ford does some investigating and discovers that his wife was having an affair with Thomas's husband, the revelation drawing the couple closer together. It was another of those parts Ford plays so well - hurt, harried and desperate for the truth, just as he'd played in Frantic.
Around now, he was turning down parts left, right and centre. Proof Of Life, The Perfect Storm, The Patriot, Traffic, all were offered to him. Indeed, being Harrison Ford, most things are. But he wanted something new, and something he hadn't done in many years was play a genuinely bad guy. He did this now in Robert Zemeckis's supernatural thriller What Lies Beneath. Here he was Dr Norman Spencer, a college professor who's been having an affair with one of his pupils, behind the back of his wife, Michelle Pfeiffer. He seems like a nice guy, he SEEMS like Harrison. But once Pfeiffer has been terrified then led to the truth by a series of horrific apparitions, he becomes something entirely different. Gratifyingly different, really. It was certainly another arrow in his quiver.
Having turned down The Hunt For Red October 12 years before, 2002 finally saw Harrison in a submarine, when he played Captain Alexei Vostrikov in K-19: The Widowmaker. Directed by Kathryn "Point Break" Bigelow and co-starring Liam Neeson, this concerned the malfunctioning of Russia's first nuclear sub. It was an interesting movie, not least because it had American film-makers showing sympathy for the old enemy. It would be followed by Hollywood Homicide, where two LA cops investigated the onstage murder of a rap group. With Harrison co-starring with Josh Hartnett, it was a clear collision of Hollywood old and new.
By 2002, Harrison had split from his wife Melissa Mathison. He was seen out with Minnie Driver and Lara Flynn Boyle, then enjoyed a more long-term relationship with Calista Flockhart. Pictured in public regularly for the first time in years, he wasn't happy, valuing anonymity above most things. "The loss of anonymity is something nobody can prepare you for," he once said. "When it happened, I recognised that I'd lost one of the most valuable things in life. To this day, I'm not very happy about it".
But it will go on, as Ford goes on. And it's not all bad. Indeed, much of it is very good, as Harrison uses his power for the general good in a way few Hollywood stars can match. Working with Conservation International, alongside BP, Starbucks, Bank Of America etc, he's organised the purchase or corraling of 1.4% of Earth's landbase for use as national parks. In South America alone, there are four parks the size of California.
And he does stuff for himself, too. Aside from the bikes and planes, he has an enviable art collection (though he's said he's no fanatic, and stops when he runs out of wall-space). But he's not one for using his name to jump queues, never has been.
With Indiana Jones 4 on the cards, Harrison Ford will be at the top of the heap for some years to come. Perhaps soon, like those other "low-grade" action stars Spielberg and Eastwood, he will be honoured by his peers at the Oscars. It could happen. He's already been given a Special Cecil B. DeMille Golden Globe, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute (previous winners James Stewart, Bette Davis, James Cagney, Henry Fonda). Maybe it ought to happen. Hollywood being obsessed with money, there are 6 billion reasons why.

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (17.01.1706 - 17.04.1790) - American politician.

B. Franklin was an outstanding US diplomat, politician and leader. At the same time he was a gifted journalist, scientist and a writer. Many people think he was the president of the country at some point. In fact, he did much more than any president could. B. Franklin entered the history as the only person from founding fathers of the USA, who signed all three important documents that formed the independence of the country.
The portrait of this influential person can now be seen on the 100-dollar bill. The future politician was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, in the family where he was the 15th child. His father was an English immigrant who worked as a craftsman. He wanted to give his children good education, but financially ready was don't for that.
Benjamin studied only a couple of years at school and then he joined other brothers at work. For many years printing was the main occupation for the future politician. In1727 at the age of twenty-one he opened his own printing press in Philadelphia. This city became his all-time residence. Nowadays tourists can see a huge monument built by Philadelphians in memory of B. Franklin. The next year he organized and ran a group of merchants and artisans.
Fifteen years later this organization was transformed into the Philosophy circle. While working for press, Benjamin was the publisher of several state-owned newspapers. Starting from 1750s he worked as a Postmaster. Approximately at that time his political career began. In 1754, during the first Albany Congress he was among those who initiated and led the event.
Later, he proposed a plan for the colonial unification. His authority along with his material well-being quickly strengthened. Three years later he was delegated to London, where he stayed till 1775. When he returned to the USA, he was instantly delegated to the Continental Congress II to work on the well-known Declaration. B. Franklin occupied many other honorable posts and was undoubtedly one of the most respectable leaders in the American history.
He is remembered as an extremely versatile person and an outstanding scientist. When he died in 1790 in Philadelphia, his funeral gathered unbelievably huge crowds. In fact, during his life Franklin belonged to the largest Masonic circle. As an inventor he made valuable contributions in the field of physics, namely in the field of electricity and electrical power.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (06.05.1856 - 23.09.1939) - Austrian psychologist

Sigmund Freud was a well-known Austrian psychologist and the founder of modern psychoanalysis. Freud wrote and published a great number of scientific works during his life. He gained the title of Doctor of Medicine, Honorary Doctor of Law, a member of London Royal Society, etc. Freud was born on May 6th, 1856, in a small Moravian town, in the family of wool merchant. The wide-spread anti-Semitic flow had forced them to leave Austria-Hungary and more to Vienna. As a child Sigismund was highly interested in natural science. He studied in one of the best gymnasiums and used to be a talented student.
At the age of seventeen he entered the Vienna University, where he devotedly studied applied biology. Under the direction of the headmaster of Psychology Institute he was engaged in research of the brain of animals and human embryos. At that period he made several important observations which became the foundation of his future neural theory. The same year he became familiar with the story of Anna O., who was his close friend’s patient. After that he stopped studying anatomy and began doing researches in the field of psychology. The medical story of this patient had a great influence on further works of the psychologist. After the loss of her father she had numerous symptoms of typical hysteria.
Hypnosis was the main method of her treatment. Consequently, Sigmund decided to practice medicine at the Vienna City Hospital, where he thoroughly studied neurology. In 1885, he went on an internship to Paris and was fascinated by the French school of neuropathology. During the internship he learnt how to explain and treat hysteria from the psychological point of view. He also became interested in the relationship between hysteria and sexuality. He had noticed that neurasthenia leads to natural sexuality. After returning to Vienna he decided to give up hypnosis and to try other methods of neuroses’ treatment, including the cathartic method which gave positive results.
After several years of using this method he made many fundamental discoveries. Most importantly he developed the theory of human psyche, which was formed of conscious, subconscious and unconscious. According to this theory, the latter is the deepest layer, which determines the whole life of a man. In 1900, he published the book under the title “The Interpretation of Dreams”, which is now widely used. Freud devoted several works to psychological studies. During the last ten years of his life the scientist analyzed and summarized his ideas about human psyche. In 1938, he was imprisoned by the Jewish ghetto in Vienna. Thanks to huge international recognition and high ransom he was released and allowed to settle in England, where he died of larynx cancer in 1939.

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (21.07.1899 – 2.07.1961) - American author and journalist.

Ernest Hemingway was a well-known American author, journalist and winner of the Nobel Prize for the achievements in the field of literature. He received wide recognition through his novels and numerous stories. Other than that his life was full of adventures and surprises. His short but intense style of writing greatly influenced the 20th century literature. The prominent writer was born on July 21st, 1899, in the privileged suburbs of Chicago. His parents were intelligent people, who gave their children good education. His father was a doctor and he hoped that his son will inherit the love of natural science. He often took little Ernest on a fishing trip.
By the age of three, the boy knew the names of all the trees, flowers, birds, fish and other animals in the woods. His mother dreamt that he would become a good musician. She insisted on Ernest attending a church choir and playing the cello. However, the boy’s favourite pastime was reading books. He read all the books he could find in the home library. He particularly liked the works of Darwin and historical literature. He started writing at school for the magazine “Blueprint”. The first essay was titled “Judgment of Manitou”. The next thing he wrote was the story “It’s All about Skin Color”, which was about the backstage and dirty side of box. While at school, Ernest was a good athlete. His free time activities were football and box.
After graduating from high school, he worked for some time at Kansas newspaper. Meanwhile, the peace in the world was interrupted by the World War I. Ernest soon joined the forefront as a Red Cross driver in Italy. At some point he was seriously injured. In 1920s, he moved to France. There, he seriously concentrated on the literary work and wrote a series of outstanding and inspirational works. Among them, “Our Time”, “The Sun Also Rises”, and his most notable work “A Farewell to Arms”. This novel had an unprecedented success. 1930s were regarded as the peak of Ernest’s success. He returned to the USA and gained numerous fans across the country. In 1930, the writer survived a serious car crash and spent lots of years recovering.
After the recovery he went to explore Africa and then moved to Spain to take part in the Civil War. He fought on the Republicans’ side. At the same time he worked on the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. This brave man was involved nearly in every war that took place at his time. This proves that he had a restless and lively nature. During the Second World War he spent lots of time in Cuba. He created one of his best stories there - “The Old Man and The Sea”. This work brought him the Pulitzer Prize. In 1960, the writer returned to the USA, already suffering from paranoia. Even the treatment in a psychiatric hospital didn’t help him. On July 2nd, 1961, he committed a suicide.

Martina Hingis

Martina Hingis (born 30.09.1980) - Swiss tennis player.

Martina Hingis was born in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). She was born Martina Hingis due to her father, Karol Hingis. At this time, her mother was joined in matrimony, and thus named Hingis, but she has since changed her name twice, to Zogg, and its present incarnation, Molitor. This is her maiden name. She changed her name to Zogg when she married a Swiss computer salesman named Andreas Zogg, but this relationship has subsequently dissolved, rather acrimoniously.
Melanie Molitor was a capable tennis player herself. It is broadly accepted that it was her who hatched the plan to make her daughter a star, though there is some debate that Karol may have had some influence in starting Martina off. That is not the version that Melanie remembers, she states that she placed a sawn-off wooden racquet in little Martina's hand for the first time when she was just two. Martina and mother played tennis together for ten minutes a day at this time.
Molitor had been ranked as highly as ten in her native Czechoslovakia during her youth. It was clear she relished her life within the game, but she simply didn't have the talent to reach the WTA Tour, to make a considerable living out of the game. Molitor's own tennis career had some major influences on Martina. Her hero was Martina Navratilova, though Molitor was clearly jealous of the freedom that tennis gave to her hero. Navratilova prompted Molitor to name her daughter Martina, and she vowed to give her daughter the opportunity to go wherever she wanted, and to have financial independence.
Also, Molitor was primarily a baseliner, and she was determined to make Martina an all-court player, capable of playing any shot in the game. It is clear that Molitor's family history had a considerable influence on her determination for her daughter to have a fruitful life. Molitor's personal life was shaped profoundly by politics in Czechoslovakia. Her father, and Martina's grandfather, was a landscape architect, and an ardent anti-Communist.
He was sentenced to eight years of hard labor, working at a uranium mine that essentially amounted to a concentration camp. In essence, he was imprisoned, purely for opposing the government politically. The Communist party had intended to break him, in an eternal attempt to crush Communist opposition. Molitor cites her father as the most important person in her life, the one who had the greatest influence on her. His refusal to compromise, and determination to stand up for what he believed in, has clearly had a huge influence on Molitor's fiery temperament. And the freedom that he was denied convinced her to give Martina every opportunity to be as free as possible.
Her father died in 1988, one year before Communism died in Czechoslovakia. Molitor says he was, apart from her, the only one who believed in Martina. Tennis was still very much part of Molitor's life when she met Karol Hingis, who has also been a player and coach. They married and set up house in Kosice, and had their only child, Martina, in 1980. Unfortunately they divorced four years later, in rather angry circumstances, the details of which remain firmly private. They will not communicate at all now.
Molitor and Hingis moved to Roznov, Czechoslovakia, with Martina's grandfather seriously ill, a bitter divorce behind them, little money and no occupation. It was now that Martina's hitherto difficult life was to take a turn for the better. She could already hit the ball back and forth 300 times. In Roznov, Hingis begun to play tennis prolifically. Martina says that the divorce was the worst time of her life. And she has hardly seen her father since it happened.
Her father is now a groundskeeper at the local tennis club where he lives, earning approximately Ј8,500 per annum. His daughter is a world famous, multi-Grand Slam winning tennis player, who was paid Ј8,500 by Sergio Tacchini every two days. For the record, Hingis still sees her father, making time to visit him at least once a year. There are rumors that Karol Hingis walked out on Martina and Melanie, and that the break-up of the marriage was not mutual, but these are unsubstantiated.
Typically, Martina does not resent her father, indeed she says they have "a great relationship", and that "he wants the best for [her]". It would appear that Hingis and Hingis are rather more alike in character than Hingis and Molitor, both of them are laid-back people. Had Martina taken up residence with her father, she probably would not have become the success she has. I cannot imagine Martina working in a factory or an office. Perhaps she would have worked with horses in some capacity. Such speculation is irrelevant, however, because Martina did indeed go off with her mother, to begin a new life in Roznov.
"Since I was in her stomach my mom was thinking I was going to be a great tennis player". Well, at Roznov, Martina's tennis practice began in earnest. Martina begun to play at the local tennis club, and what had been a turbulent life suddenly became a happy one. "I just loved it. I didn't want anything else in the world. We had a small apartment, which I liked, and we were always on the courts playing tennis. We had fun".
By five, Martina was playing tennis for up to five hours a day, considerably longer than she plays now. She entered her first tournament at four, and by the time she was six, she could be beaten by no-one under the age of nine. Most importantly for a young girl, she had esteem and belonging. "I just had a great life out there. There were always 40 kids on the grounds. It was like a big family together, like one big community. I just grew up on the courts. I would go to the courts with my mom, and when she practiced, I was there. I would play for four hours, then play a soccer game in the evenings, and then go home and hit the ball on the wall of our apartment. I was crazy!"
Martina also sparked her passion for horse riding when her mother took her to ride a pony, aged just four. She loved it instantly, and now lists horse riding as her main passion in life. She was also able to go and see her grandmother and father whenever she wanted to, and often went over to the courts for lunch, as their house was near the courts. But when she was seven, Martina was again uprooted, as her mother married Andreas Zogg, and moved to Switzerland.
Her new residence has been her home for years since, it was the beautiful town of Trubbach. In some senses Martina had landed on her feet, Trubbach is just the most gorgeous place you can imagine, and an unassuming girl was well suited to life in the tiny hamlet. Her laid-back attitude was also reflected in the attitudes of her new compatriots. It was obviously not an ideal thing for a seven year-old girl to start all over again in a new country. But Hingis was nothing if not resolute. She refused to be held back a year, and was thrust straight into the second grade.
At first Martina could barely understand a word that was being said. She would return from a day's schooling to announce to her mother that she had no idea what they had been doing. "I wasn't very happy to go to school at first". But within three months, Martina was fluent in Swiss-German, and she now appears as Swiss as any girl, and is as eloquent in German as in Czech.
When asked in Melbourne in 1997, how Slovakia would react to her Australian Open victory, she responded by saying that she was Swiss, Switzerland was her country, and that she was unrelated to Slovakia, now. "I was determined to learn and make friends, which I did in time". Hingis is, in my opinion, a fine linguist. She speaks four languages, and I feel bound to say that her English is excellent. She could not speak any English until she was 12, yet it needs only a second for her to describe her mother as undiplomatic. I really admire anyone who can learn English; it is a language without rule or reason.
Martina first defeated her mother when she was ten years old, and throughout her younger years won a succession of Swiss titles, until, when she was 11, she was the under-18 champion of Switzerland. Next year she won the adult Swiss championship. It was clear that Martina was going to have a career in tennis, and a sparkling future was predicted when she became the youngest girl to win a junior Grand Slam, at the French Open, when still only 12.
So, by the time she was 14, having left school, Martina was ready for professional tennis. She entered her first professional tournament on 3rd October, 1994, in Zurich, a mere 50 miles from her home. In her very first professional event she upset American veteran Patty Fendick in straight sets, and caused a young Mary Pierce considerable discomfort in the second round. She reached two quarterfinals in her next two events, and upset former top-ten player Helena Sukova.
By the end of 1994, Martina Hingis had broken into the world's top 100. A career had begun that was to bring achievement, glory, fame, admiration and wealth. And freedom.
And such has been the nature of her life that a rather splendid young lady had been forged, a charming, self-aware, spontaneous girl, who realized just how lucky she was, and was determined to enjoy and cherish what she had. This girl had no bitterness toward her father, ultimate respect and gratitude for her mother, and the desire and passion to learn and experience and prosper. And she was about to prosper profoundly in the sphere of tennis...

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock (13.08.1899 - 29.04.1980) - American film director

Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was a brilliant film director and (screen-) writer. He was the master of creating a tense atmosphere on screen. Many critics attribute the creation of modern thriller to Hitchcock. His glory doesn’t fade over the years, but only grows stronger. His films are still highly demanded and popular.
The future genius was born on August 13, 1899 in one of the London suburbs. Little is known about his childhood, but they say his great grandfather lived in Stratford and was a fisherman. His father was a grocer, while his mother was busy raising three children and looking after the house. In fact, Alfred was the youngest child in the family.
As a kid he showed some signs of emotional disturbance. First of all, he had obsessive need for cleanness. Secondly, he had a number of fears and phobias. In addition, in early childhood he spent some time in a police cell for minor offence. Some critics believe this fear of policemen and unjust punishment lived in the writer’s soul till the end of his life. At the same time his subconscious feeling of persecution was so strong that it was embodied in his works.
At the age of fifteen Alfred entered the London School of Engineering. He also attended the course dedicated to art history. In the midst of the First World War he volunteered to join the army, but having excessive weight he was kept in the reserve. As a teen he started showing interest in cinematography. When he was twenty-one he managed to get a designer’s job in Paramount branch based in London.
He soon became the head of the titles’ department. In 1923 at last he got a chance to try his talent in film-directing. He started working on the picture “Number 13” which stayed unfinished though. Two years later he directed his first film “The Pleasure Garden”. A little later he released, according to his own opinion, his first serious work - “The Lodge: A Story of the London Fog”.
It was the first time when he turned to the genre of thriller and the first time when he shortly appeared in the movie. These tiny appearances in his own films became the director’s distinctive style. In 1929 he shot the first sound movie in British cinematography. For decades he continued shooting detective stories and thrillers. In 1937 he received an honorable award from New York Critics Guild. Starting from that time he moved to the USA and worked for Hollywood.
During his life Alfred created a great number of motion pictures, but the one that everybody remembered was “The Birds”. It was the story about the human encounter with the hostile and inexplicable forces of nature. His last film was shot in 1976. People often call him the “master of suspense”. At the same time his “Psycho” is still on the list of best American movies. The great director died in 1980 in his own house in Bel Air, California.

Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston (09.08.1963 - 11.02.2012) - American singer and actress.

Whitney Houston was born on 9 August 1963 in Newark, New Jersey. Her father, John Russell Houston, was a military man and her mother, Cissy Houston, worked as a singer. Whitney’s mother, godmother and cousins were well-known people in different musical genres like gospel, soul, pop and others. Whitney was the youngest child in the family.
When Houston was 11 she began to sing in the choir at the New Hope Baptist Church. Moreover, Whitney learned to play the piano there. Then she entered a Catholic girls’ high school in Caldwell. While there she made the acquaintance of Robyn Crawford who became her best friend. At the same time her mother taught her singing. It is also known that Whitney liked music of Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan and Gladys Knight and this had an influence on her future works.
Cissy Houston, her mother, performed in nightclubs and Whitney often appeared on stage with her. When Houston was 14 she sang with the Michael Zager Band. It was the single “Life’s a Party”. Afterwards Zager offered Whitney a recording contract but her mother was against because Houston had to finish school.
A year later she began to cooperate with Chaka Khan. Subsequently the song “I’m Every Woman” was included in The Bodyguard soundtrack album.
In the early eighties Whitney began to work as a fashion model. She cooperated with different fashion magazines like Cosmopolitan, Glamour and others. At the same time she worked with producers Martin Bisi, Bill Laswell and Michael Beinhorn.
In 1983 head of Arista Records Clive Davis made the acquaintance of Houston. He admired her talent and offered a recording contract. Whitney signed it. The first song was “Hold me” and she sang it with Teddy Pendergrass. This project made her famous.
Whitney Houston is famous as an actress, recording artist, fashion model and producer. She received a large number of prestige awards. Houston sold about 170 million singles, albums and videos all over the world. There are 7 studio albums created by Whitney. Moreover she released 3 movie soundtrack albums. Her debut album entitled Whitney Houston was released in 1985. At that time this album became the best-selling debut album by a female artist. She made a major contribution to pop music and several female singers followed in her footsteps.
Whitney Houston stared in The Bodyguard. The movie was released in 1992. The movie’s original soundtrack created by Houston won Grammy Award in 1994. It includes the famous song “I Will Always Love You” which became the best-selling single by a female singer. She also got a part in the movies The Preacher’s Wife and Waiting to Exhale. Whitney’s fourth, fifth and sixth studio albums were released in 1998, 2002 and 2003, respectively. The last album “I Look to You” was released in 2009.
On February 11, 2012, Whitney Houston died in her guest room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for reasons not yet known.

Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks (born 09.07.1956) - American actor.

Thomas J. Hanks was born on July 9th, 1956, in Concord, California, a direct descendant of an uncle of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln. His parents split when he was young, the details of their divorce making them "pioneers in the development of marriage dissolution in California". Tom and his two older siblings, Sandra and Larry, went with their father, Amos, a chef. A younger brother, Jim, stayed with mother Janet (Jim would later appear in several of Tom's productions, including acting as his running double in Forrest Gump). Dad's work enforced a nomadic existence upon them, with the kids shifted from school to school, never able to form lasting friendships, making Hanks painfully shy. It didn't help that Amos was married twice after Janet, Tom explaining that, by the age of 10, he'd had "three mothers, five grammar schools and ten houses".
Eventually, in 1966, Amos settled in Oakland, where Tom had to get used to a new mother and new siblings. Here he attended both junior high and Skyline High School, where he indulged his early interests in space and baseball, excelled at soccer and on the track and "became the loud one" - a trick he'd learned when trying to get attention in a succession of new schools.
It was at Skyline that he became interested in acting. Impressed by a buddy in a school production of Dracula, he joined the Thespian Club and forced his way in by sheer weight of enthusiasm. First he was stage manager on My Fair Lady, then won roles in Night Of The Iguana, Twelfth Night and South Pacific, the last of these winning him Skyline's Best Actor of 1974 award.
On graduation, he enrolled at Chabot College, close by in Hayward, working as a sideline as a bellboy at the local Hilton. Doing the occasional drama class, he was required at one point to attend a Berkeley Repertory Company performance of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. It proved a formative experience, with young Tom wholly taken by the performance of Joe Spano who'd recently appeared in American Graffiti (he'd later show up in Hanks' own Apollo 13 and From The Earth To The Moon). Tom decided there and then that he wanted to be as good as Spano.
After two years at Chabot, he transferred to California State University in Sacramento. Here he made two vital connections. First was with Susan Dillingham, who'd later take Samantha Lewes as her stage name and become Tom's first wife. Then there was Vincent Dowling. Tom had been trying to get into university stage productions to no avail, being forced to content himself with set-building. Frustrated, he auditioned for a local theatre production of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, winning the role of Yasha. Dowling, the director, was so impressed he invited Hanks to join him at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland, of which he was artistic director.
So, in the summer of 1977, off Tom went for his first taste of professional acting, earning $210 a week as Gremio in The Taming Of The Shrew. Samantha would join him, the pair moving in together. With the company touring into December, Tom went AWOL from Cal State - he never returned. Instead, he took work at the Civic Theatre in Sacramento, learning all the backstage mechanics of the trade. Then, in the summer of '78, he returned to Cleveland, playing Proteus in Two Gentlemen Of Verona and winning a Best Actor award from the Cleveland Critics Circle.
Aged just 22 and picking up major awards already - how could he fail? Tom took off for New York City and the bright lights of Broadway, taking an apartment with Samantha in Hell's Kitchen. But there was no work - just extra pressure as Samantha gave birth to their first child, Colin (now an actor in his own right, starring in Orange County). Keen for employment, Hanks returned to the Great Lakes Festival for the summer of 1979, to play Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. His former director, Dowling, would later claim "He was the best Shakespearian clown I ever knew, because he was seriously real and seriously funny at the same time". It was this "realness" and humour that would eventually turn Hanks into a megastar.
Returning to New York in late '79, Tom found work at the Riverside Shakespeare Theatre, as Callimaco in The Mandrake. More importantly, he got a manager, and this led to his first screen role, amazingly in the infamous slasher flick He Knows You're Alone, where a psycho's menacing a bridal party. Well, it was a start.
January, 1980, brought the first really big break. The ABC network had launched a talent development programme in the hope of finding some hot young kids to pep up their ratings. Tom went for it, enduring a gruelling series of auditions before landing one of the two leads in the sit-com Bosom Buddies. Here Peter Scolari and Tom played two ad execs, Henry Desmond and Kip Wilson, who can't find an apartment. Then, when they do, it's in a women-only building, meaning they must continually cross-dress and call themselves Hildegard and Buffy (that's right, Tom Hanks played a girl called Buffy YEARS before Sarah Michelle Gellar). It was a cute idea, but not one that would run and run. Bosom Buddies lasted for two seasons, Scolari later turning up in Tom's That Thing You Do! And From The Earth To The Moon.
In the meantime, Tom had moved the family to the San Fernando Valley, Samantha giving birth to daughter Elizabeth. With Bosom Buddies over, Tom had to look elsewhere, and nabbed brief spots on Michael J. Fox's Family Ties, The Love Boat and, vitally, Happy Days. There he met Richie Cunningham, or rather Ron Howard, then launching as career as a director. When Howard was casting for his next film, Splash, about a sweet guy's love affair with a mermaid, he called up Hanks to test for a supporting role. So good was he that he got the lead instead, the lesser role going to John Candy.
Splash, which saw Hanks hankering after Daryl Hannah, made Tom a minor star, and kept him employed throughout the mid-Eighties. The roustabout Bachelor Party was a commercial success, then came Volunteers, where he played a debt-ridden playboy joining the Peace Corps in Thailand. This saw him alongside Candy once more, and also one Rita Wilson, who he'd earlier met when she popped up as Peter Scolari's Satan-worshipping girlfriend in Bosom Buddies. Next came The Man With One Red Shoe, where Tom was a dopey violinist caught up in intra-CIA shenanigans, and the hilarious The Money Pit, where he and Shelley Long have their house renovated, only to see it gradually collapse around their ears. There'd also be Nothing In Common, where he looked after his sick father (a bit close to the bone, this one, as Amos by this time suffered from the kidney failure that would kill him), and Every Time We Say Goodbye, set in Jerusalem, 1942, where he fell for a girl whose parents disapprove of him. The last of these proved that Tom could manage a romantic lead in a "serious" movie. It also earned him his first $1 million paycheck.
But, though Tom's career was on the up and up, his marriage was falling apart. Not wanting his kids to suffer as he had done, he took a break from film-making in 1985 to produce, direct AND build sets for a production of The Passing Game at the Gene Dynarski Theatre, with his wife Samantha co-producing and starring. It didn't work. By the end of the year, Tom and Samantha were separated.
Despite the break, Tom was getting ever hotter. Dragnet, a semi-spoof of the old TV cop show, was fairly lame but a financial success. Then came Punchline, where he played Stephen Gold, a bitter and angry comedian who first abuses then helps housewife Sally Field as she attempts to learn the comic craft. For research, Hanks wrote his own material and tried it out live at various LA comedy clubs.
And then came the first big one, appropriately titled Big, directed by another sitcom star turned director, Penny Marshall (Laverne from Laverne and Shirley). As Josh Baskin, a kid trapped in a man's body, working for a toy company and winning the heart of cold exec Elizabeth Perkins, Hanks was hyperactive, endlessly curious, near-perfect, and Oscar-nominated for the first time. Incredible, given he was third choice, behind Harrison Ford and Robert De Niro. Big would be his first $100 million hit. Many more would follow.
Hanks' profile rose steadily as a suspicious suburbanite in The 'Burbs, as a cop with a doggy partner in Turner And Hooch, and Joe Versus The Volcano, where he played a goofy guy who, with a short while to live, gets a rich man to pay him to jump into an active volcano. This last movie paired him for the first time with Meg Ryan, later co-star in two of his biggest hits. But then Hanks' ability to survive poor movies unscathed was sorely challenged when he played Sherman McCoy, the "master of the universe" and stock-trader drawn into a racial controversy after a hit-and-run accident in Brian De Palma's expensive, gaudy Bonfire Of The Vanities. The movie was considered one of the worst flops in history, threatening to finish him for good.
Fortunately, by now his personal life was coming together. With his first marriage over, Tom was free to date Rita Wilson, and the couple were wed, with son Chester being born in 1990, followed by another boy, Truman. Having learned from experience what a heavy workload can do to a relationship, he took a couple of years off, enjoying his new family and waiting for the right part to kick-start his career.
The right part came soon, alongside Geena Davis and Madonna, in Marshall's A League Of Their Own - the first in an outrageous run of hits. Here he played Jimmy Dugan, a former baseball star who's lost his career to injury and consoled himself with heavy drinking. Given a chance at redemption, he finds himself in charge of a women's baseball side which, after much comic incompetence, he inspires to become one of the finest ever.
Next, paired with Ryan once again, came Sleepless In Seattle. Here he was a sweet and kind widower who cannot find a woman to match his dear departed. When his young son contacts a radio show, Tom talks of love on-air and attracts the attention of a romantically confused Ryan. And so, amidst a welter of coincidences and near-misses, the couple are drawn ever closer together. Funny, witty and not overly sentimental, as well as well-conceived and paced by writer/director Nora Ephron, it was a massive hit, and featured a natty cameo by Tom's wife Rita.
And 1993 brought yet more success to Hanks. The often harrowing Philadelphia saw him as lawyer Andrew Beckett who, sacked when he contracts AIDS, sues for discrimination and takes on Denzel Washington as his lawyer. With Denzel's character being a major homophobe, director Jonathan Demme was able to attack prejudice and promote justice in a mainstream fashion, rather than delving into the gay lifestyle. Some gay activists complained, but Hanks' brilliant performance and a stirring storyline gave the fight against AIDS some of the best publicity it ever had. Tom was duly presented with an Oscar and, incredibly, his acceptance speech, where he thanked his old teacher at Skyline, Rawley T. Farnsworth, inspired another movie, Kevin Kline's In And Out.
Then it got even better. 1994's epic Forrest Gump had him as an idiot savant raising hearts and minds over a 40-year period, including the Vietnam war. Gary Sinise added grit as an embittered vet, damaged inside and out, while Sally Field reappeared, this time as
Tom's doting mum, the one who teaches him such world-altering pearls as "Life is like a box of chocolates". With its home-spun wisdom and relentless humanity, Forrest Gump was beyond feel-good. And it cleaned up, with Tom winning another Oscar, making him the first man in 55 years (since Spencer Tracy) to win consecutive Best Actor statues.
Normally when actors hit such peaks they fall away, at least for a while. Not Hanks. 1995 was another scorcher. First he provided the voice of Sheriff Woody in the brilliant Toy Story. Then he was back with Ron Howard as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13, intoning the immortal line "Houston, we have a problem" and presenting the emotional side of the struggle to bring the damaged spacecraft back to Earth. With Hanks still obsessed with space, it must have been a real joy. It's a wonder that he hadn't demanded the part of Buzz Lightyear.
Though Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 made $500 million between them, Tom now took his foot off the pedal and concentrated on his own thing. Turning down the part of Jerry Maguire, he turned to writing and directing with That Thing You Do!, about Sixties one-hit wonders The Wonders. It was nice and engaging - far away from the Oscar-winning extravaganzas that were now dominating his life.
But he couldn't stay away for long. 1998 brought You've Got Mail, another rom-com, reuniting him with Ephron and Ryan. Then he starred in a real event movie, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Here he was Captain John Miller, leading a small band of brothers through Occupied France in search of Matt Damon's Private Ryan, and this after having survived the terrifying mayhem of the D-Day landings. It was another triumph, with Tom Oscar-nominated once more. He'd also be given the Distinguished Public Service Award, the highest honour the US Navy can confer upon a civilian.
Such was Saving Private Ryan's effect that Hanks and Spielberg felt the need to do it all over again, with the award-winning miniseries Band Of Brothers. Before this, though, Tom would score again with Toy Story 2 and Stephen King's The Green Mile, wherein he played Paul Edgecomb, a kind-hearted guard of Death Row who realises that the condemned Michael Clarke Duncan might be some kind of mystic healer. A year later came Cast Away, reuniting him with Gump director Robert Zemeckis, when he played Fed Ex exec Chuck Noland, marooned on a desert island after a particularly frightening plane crash. As mentioned before, for much of the movie we see only Hanks, and we're just watching his battle for survival as he seldom says anything (though he does talk to a volleyball called Wilson - as in Rita Wilson). It's proof of Hanks ability and charm that we don't care - he says it all without words, well deserving his fifth Oscar nomination.
But it wasn't just Oscar nods that came his way. Back in '98, Hanks had also returned to writing and directing, as well as producing, with From The Earth To The Moon. This, revisiting his old obsession with infinity and beyond, was one of the biggest miniseries ever made, a drama-documentary covering the NASA space programme of the Sixties and Seventies. It would win an Emmy as Outstanding Series, with Tom (who co-wrote 4 of the 12 episodes) being nominated for his directing of the first instalment. His old mucker Sally Field was also involved as co-director.
2002 was another monster year. First came Sam Mendes' Road To Perdition. Here Hanks played Michael Sullivan, a hitman for mobster Paul Newman. Cold and utterly ruthless, he's nevertheless forced to revise his attitudes when his young son witnesses one of his killings and, of course, must be eliminated. To prevent this, Sullivan takes the kid on the lam, pursued by Jude Law's implacable assassin Maguire. After this came Catch Me If You Can, pairing Hanks with Spielberg yet again, with Tom as FBI agent Carl Hanratty, cooly tracking down Leonardo DiCaprio's Frank Abagnale, a con man and master of disguise. It was another mighty hit, taking $164 million at the US box-office, on a budget of only $52 million.
Incredibly, this wasn't all for 2002. Tom also co-produced the comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which cost $5 million and, having spent 20 weeks slowly climbing the charts, made well over $50 million at the US box-office alone. AND there was a cameo in the long-awaited Rutles follow-up, Can't Buy Me Lunch.
2004 would see his next assault on the box-office, but would also see an end to his remarkable dominance. The Ladykillers was a typically outlandish Coen Brothers remake of the old Alec Guinness hit, with Hanks starring as Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, a bizarre Southerner claiming to be a classics professor and dressing somewhat like Colonel Sanders. Taking rooms in a little old lady's house, he recruits an oddball crew and, pretending they are a musical ensemble, plots to rob a nearby casino. The movie wasn't a success, it was too cliched and brash, but, though it dropped out of the Top 10 after only two weeks, it still slipped into profit and Hanks, managing to keep Dorr's florid speech just this side of ridiculous, continued to push at his own boundaries.
Quickly after this came another reunion with Spielberg and another character guaranteed to capture the heart of the US audience. In The Terminal, he played an eastern European arriving at JFK airport to find that his country has fallen in a coup and his passport and visa are now worthless. Thus he cannot go home or step onto American soil and must stay in the International Departures lounge. Returning abandoned luggage trolleys for quarters, he soon learns how to survive, and becomes important to all the staff (including hostess Catherine Zeta-Jones), winning them over with his trusting, trustworthy, near-Gump-like manner. It was a fine comedy, delicate and brilliantly timed, particularly in Hanks' dealings with frustrated customs officer Stanley Tucci, and held up well against a string of summer blockbusters.
After lending his voice to Robert Zemeckis's animated Christmas parable The Polar Express, Hanks moved on to A Cold Case, directed by Mark Romanek who'd disappeared after 1987's weird but fantastic Static but recently returned with Robin Williams' One Hour Photo. Here he played an investigator who, for 27 years, has been haunted by the murder of his best friend. Now, on the verge of retirement, he decides he must solve the case to find any kind of personal contentment. Then would come Lawrence Kasdan's The Risk Pool, based on Richard Russo's novel, where he played a charming but thoroughly unreliable thief and gambler who's forced to look after his son when his estranged wife suffers a breakdown. There'd also be the western Boone's Lick, a Larry McMurtry piece with a similar feel to his Lonesome Dove, which would see Julianne Moore dragging her father and four kids from Missouri out to the Wyoming fort where her husband is based. Hanks would play her husband's brother who escorts the family and, naturally, falls for Moore as he aids in some perilous adventures.
If his extraordinary run of hits isn't proof enough of the respect he's garnered from peers and public alike, consider this: when Steven Spielberg, the biggest director in the world, wants a hero, someone could can play a good guy in a bad position and somehow make it interesting, he calls Hanks. And when Sam Mendes, perhaps the hippest director out there, needed someone to pull off a cold-hearted murderer who also loves his son, he called Hanks too. We all know he can play a loving father with his brain disengaged, but he's hardly known for his murderers. But what he IS known for is his acting. Of COURSE he can do a murderer. He's TOM HANKS, for Christ's sake.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (07.05.1840 - 06.11.1893) - Russian composer.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on 7 May 1840 in Votkinsk. He went down in history as a significant composer who wrote popular concertos, ballets, symphonies, operas and chamber music. Some of his works have made the list of the most famous compositions in the classical repertoire. Pyotr Tchaikovsky is considered the first Russian composer who produced a strong impression internationally.
The education of the young composer was destined for a career as a state employee but Tchaikovsky was musically precocious. In those years it was difficult to make a musical career in Russia and in addition to that there was not a system of public music education. When musical education became available Tchaikovsky snatched at a chance and entered Saint Petersburg Conservatory which was founded in 1862. In 1865 he graduated from conservatory.
The education of Tchaikovsky was Western-oriented and that’s why he was estranged from the Russian composers of The Five, who embodied the contemporary nationalist movement. As a result he reconciled his acquirements with the native musical practices. This approach enabled him to think out an individual, original, but unmistakably Russian style. In those years the principles that determined concord, melody and other bases of Russian music differed from those that determined Western European music; as a consequence of this Russian music was not fully used in large-scale Western composition. The principles of Russian nationalist musicians ran counter to those which supported European conventions and this was a reason for personal antipathies that had a negative influence on self-assurance of Tchaikovsky.
Although Tchaikovsky was successful he was often depressed. The chief reasons contributing to Tchaikovsky’s crises were his leaving his mother for boarding school, her early death and collapse of his relationship with Nadezhda von Meck. Earlier scientists supposed that his same-sex orientation was also a reason for his depression but now musicologists understate importance of this fact.
Tchaikovsky’s music was popular but sometimes it was subjected to criticism. Some people considered that it was not adequately representative of native musical values. Some Europeans on the contrary praised Tchaikovsky because in their opinion he could offer the music that transcended Russian classical music’s stereotypes. There are still negative opinions of Tchaikovsky’s work but by the end of the 20th century most of the critics appreciated him as a great composer.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky died of cholera at the age of 53 but some musicologists state that Tchaikovsky could commit a suicide.

Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan (07.04.1954) - Hong Kong actor.

Jackie Chan, (born 7 April 1954) is a Hong Kong actor, action choreographer, filmmaker, comedian, director, producer, martial artist, screenwriter, entrepreneur, singer and stunt performer.
In his movies, he is known for his acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, use of improvised weapons, and innovative stunts. Jackie Chan has been acting since the 1960s and has appeared in over 100 films. Chan has received stars on the Hong Kong Avenue of Stars and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 1976, Jackie Chan received a telegram from Willie Chan, a film producer in the Hong Kong film industry who had been impressed with Jackie's stuntwork. Willie Chan offered him an acting role in a film directed by Lo Wei. Lo had seen Chan's performance in the John Woo film Hand of Death (1976) and planned to model him after Bruce Lee with the film New Fist of Fury. His stage name was changed to Sing Lung (also transcribed as Cheng Long, literally "become the dragon") to emphasise his similarity to Bruce Lee, whose stage name was Lei Siu-lung (meaning "Little Dragon"). The film was unsuccessful because Chan was not accustomed to Lee's martial arts style. Despite the film's failure, Lo Wei continued producing films with similar themes, resulting in little improvement at the box office.
Chan's first major breakthrough was the 1978 film Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, shot while he was loaned to Seasonal Film Corporation under a two-picture deal. Under director Yuen Woo-ping, Chan was allowed complete freedom over his stunt work. The film established the comedic kung fu genre, and proved to be a breath of fresh air for the Hong Kong audience. Chan then starred in Drunken Master, which finally propelled him to mainstream success.
Upon Chan's return to Lo Wei's studio, Lo tried to replicate the comedic approach of Drunken Master, producing Half a Loaf of Kung Fu and Spiritual Kung Fu. He also gave Chan the opportunity to co-direct The Fearless Hyena with Kenneth Tsang. When Willie Chan left the company, he advised Jackie to decide for himself whether or not to stay with Lo Wei. During the shooting of Fearless Hyena Part II, Chan broke his contract and joined Golden Harvest, prompting Lo to blackmail Chan with triads, blaming Willie for his star's departure.
The dispute was resolved with the help of fellow actor and director Jimmy Wang Yu, allowing Chan to stay with Golden Harvest.
Willie Chan had become Jackie's personal manager and firm friend, and has remained so for over 30 years. He was instrumental in launching Chan's international career, beginning with his first forays into the American film industry in the 1980s. His first Hollywood film was Battle Creek Brawl in 1980. Chan then played a minor role in the 1981 film The Cannonball Run, which grossed US$100 million worldwide. Despite being largely ignored by audiences in favour of established American actors like Burt Reynolds, Chan was impressed by the outtakes shown at the closing credits, inspiring him to include the same device in his future films.
After the commercial failure of The Protector in 1985, Chan temporarily abandoned his attempts to break into the US market, returning his focus to Hong Kong films.
Back in Hong Kong, Chan's films began to reach a larger audience in East Asia, with early successes in the lucrative Japanese market including The Young Master (1980) and
Dragon Lord (1982). The Young Master went on to beat previous box office records set by Bruce Lee and established Chan as Hong Kong cinema's top star.
Chan produced a number of action comedy films with his opera school friends Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. The three co-starred together for the first time in 1983 in Project A, which won the Best Action Design Award at the third annual Hong Kong Film Awards.
Over the following two years, the "Three Brothers" appeared in Wheels on Meals and the original Lucky Stars trilogy. In 1985, Chan made the first Police Story film, a US-influenced action comedy in which Chan performed his own stunts. It was named the "Best Film" at the 1986 Hong Kong Film Awards. In 1987, Chan played "Asian Hawk", an Indiana Jones-esque character, in the film Armour of God. The film was Chan's biggest domestic box office success up to that point, grossing over HK $35 million.
Jackie Chan created his screen persona as a response to Bruce Lee, and the numerous imitators who appeared before and after Lee's death. In contrast to Lee's characters, who were typically stern, morally upright heroes, Chan plays well-meaning, slightly foolish regular guys (often at the mercy of their friends, girlfriends or families) who always triumph in the end despite the odds. Additionally, Chan has stated that he deliberately styles his movement to be the opposite of Lee's: where Lee held his arms wide, Chan holds his tight to the body; where Lee was loose and flowing, Chan is tight and choppy. Despite the success of the Rush Hour series, Chan has stated that he is not a fan of it since he neither appreciates the action scenes in the movie, nor understands American humour.
In recent years, the aging Chan grew tired of being typecast as an action hero, prompting him to act with more emotion in his latest films.
In New Police Story, he portrayed a character suffering from alcoholism and mourning his murdered colleagues. To further shed the image of Mr. Nice Guy, Chan played an anti-hero for the first time in Rob-B-Hood starring as Thongs, a burglar with gambling problems.
In 1982, Jackie Chan married Lin Feng-Jiao (aka Joan Lin), a Taiwanese actress. That same year, the two had a son, singer and actor Jaycee Chan. Elaine Ng Yi-Lei, gave birth to a daughter, Etta Ng Chok Lam, on November 19, 1999. The Hong Kong media alleged that he was the father, but as of yet, there has been no verification by either party involved. He also has a nephew named Austin Chan Chun-Hin residing in Shanghai. Chan is a Buddhist.
He speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, and English fluently, and also speaks some German, Korean and Japanese, as well as a little Spanish.
In 2009, Chan received an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambodia.

Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin (26.04.1889 - 25.12.1977) - British actor.

Charlie Chaplin, considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular "Little Tramp" character; the man with the toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, bamboo cane, and a funny walk.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in Walworth, London, England on April 26th, 1889 to Charles and Hannah (Hill) Chaplin, both music hall performers, who were married on June 22nd, 1885. After Charles Sr. separated from Hannah to perform in New York City, Hannah then tried to resurrect her stage career. Unfortunately, her singing voice had a tendency to break at unexpected moments. When this happened, the stage manager spotted young Charlie standing in the wings and led him on stage, where five-year-old Charlie began to sing a popular tune. Charlie and his half-brother, Syd Chaplin (born Sydney Hawkes), spent their lives in and out of charity homes and workhouses between their mother's bouts of insanity. Hannah was committed to Cane Hill Asylum in May of 1903 and lived there until 1921, when Chaplin moved her to California.
Chaplin began his official acting career at the age of eight, touring with The Eight Lancashire Lads. At 18 he began touring with Fred Karno's vaudeville troupe, joining them on the troupe's 1910 US tour. He traveled west to California in December 1913 and signed on with Keystone Studios' popular comedy director Mack Sennett, who had seen Chaplin perform on stage in New York. Charlie soon wrote his brother Syd, asking him to become his manager. While at Keystone, Chaplin appeared in and directed 35 films, starring as the Little Tramp in nearly all. In November 1914 he left Keystone and signed on at Essanay, where he made 15 films. In 1916, he signed on at Mutual and made 12 films. In June 1917 Chaplin signed up with First National Studios, after which he built Chaplin Studios. In 1919 he and Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists (UA).
Chaplin's life and career was full of scandal and controversy. His first big scandal was during World War I, during which time his loyalty to England, his home country, was questioned. He had never applied for US citizenship, but claimed that he was a "paying visitor" to the United States. Many British citizens called Chaplin a coward and a slacker. This and his other career eccentricities sparked suspicion with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and the House Un-American Activities Council (HUAC), who believed that he was injecting Communist propaganda into his films. Chaplin's later film The Great Dictator (1940), which was his first "talkie", also created a stir. In the film Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, it grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations.
Another scandal occurred when Chaplin briefly dated 22-year-old Joan Barry. However, Chaplin's relationship with Barry came to an end in 1942, after a series of harassing actions from her. In May of 1943 Barry returned to inform Chaplin that she was pregnant, and filed a paternity suit, claiming that the unborn child was his. During the 1944 trial blood tests proved that Chaplin was not the father, but at the time blood tests were inadmissible evidence and he was ordered to pay $75 a week until the child turned 21. Chaplin was also scrutinized for his support in aiding the Russian struggle against the invading Nazis during World War II, and the U.S. government questioned his moral and political views, suspecting him of having Communist ties. For this reason HUAC subpoenaed him in 1947. However, HUAC finally decided that it was no longer necessary for him to appear for testimony. Conversely, when Chaplin and his family traveled to London for the premier of _Limelight (1952)_ , he was denied re-entry to the United States. In reality, the government had almost no evidence to prove that he was a threat to national security. He and his wife decided, instead, to settle in Switzerland.
Chaplin was married four times and had a total of 11 children. In 1918 he wed Mildred Harris, they had a son together, Norman Spencer Chaplin, who only lived three days. Chaplin and Mildred were divorced in 1920. He married Lita Grey in 1924, who had two sons, Charles Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Chaplin. They were divorced in 1927. In 1936, Chaplin married Paulette Goddard and his final marriage was to Oona O'Neill (Oona Chaplin), daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1943. Oona gave birth to eight children: Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Chaplin, Josephine Chaplin, Victoria Chaplin, Eugene, Jane, Annette-Emilie and Christopher Chaplin.
In contrast to many of his boisterous characters, Chaplin was a quiet man who kept to himself a lot. He also had an "un-millionaire" way of living. Even after he had accumulated millions, he continued to live in shabby accommodations.
In 1921 Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker, and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1972 he was honored with an Academy Award for his "incalculable effect in making motion pictures the art form of the century." In 1975 England's Queen Elizabeth II knighted him. Chaplin's other works included musical scores he composed for many of his films. He also authored two autobiographical books, "My Autobiography" in 1964 and its companion volume, "My Life in Pictures" in 1974. Chaplin died of natural causes on December 25, 1977 at his home in Switzerland.
In 1978, Chaplin's corpse was stolen from its grave and was not recovered for three months; he was re-buried in a vault surrounded by cement. Charlie Chaplin was considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of American cinema, whose movies were and still are popular throughout the world, and have even gained notoriety as time progresses. His films show, through the Little Tramp's positive outlook on life in a world full of chaos, that the human spirit has and always will remain the same.

Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill (30.10.1874 - 24.01.1965) - British politician.

Winston Churchill was one of the most powerful British politicians. He was twice the Prime minister of the UK. Moreover, he was a very talented man. In 1901 he got the Nobel Prize in Literature. Winston Churchill was born on November the 30th 1874, in Woodstock, in the aristocratic family of the Dukes. At the very young age he was taught at home by his nanny. At the age of eight he was sent to St. George’s School. He was rebellious by nature and had poor academic record in school. The boy suffered a speech impediment, which continued throughout his career.
Since 1888 he had been studying at Harrow School - one of the oldest and most renowned schools for boys in England. In 1893 Churchill entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. At first, he was at the infantry class, but two years later he was promoted to second lieutenant. At the same time, he suffered the loss of two close people - his father and his nanny. Being a young officer, he participated in several war campaigns: in British India, Sudan, Cuba. Gradually, he became a war correspondent and an author of works about military campaigns.
He met his future wife, Clementine Hozier, in 1904 during the ball at the Earl of Crewe’s house. Four years later he proposed to her and they got married. All in all, they had five children: four daughters and one son. In 1899 Churchill unsuccessfully ran for parliament. Then he was captured during the Anglo-Boer war but managed to escape. In 1900 he was elected to the House of Commons from the Conservatives. At the same time he published his novel “Savrola”. In 1905 he became Under-Secretary of States for the Colonies.
Being in high politics for fifty years, Churchill had a number of political posts, including the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Secretary of State for War, the President of the Board of Trade. However, the most important mission of this figure was yet to come. In May of 1940 he became the Prime Minister of the UK and remained in office till July of 1945. He was again elected to hold this position in October of 1951. This time he remained in office until his resignation in April 1955. Winston Churchill had a series of heart strokes when he was old. He died at his London home on January 24th, 1965.

Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov (29.01.1860 - 15.07.1904) - Russian writer.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the small seaport of Taganrog, southern Russia, as the son of a grocer and grandson of a serf, who had bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught himself to read and write. Chekhov's mother was Yevgenia Morozov, the daughter of a cloth merchant. Chekhov's childhood was shadowed by his father's tyranny, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, which was open from five in the morning till midnight. "When I think back on my childhood," he later said, "it all seems quite gloomy to me."
He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog (1867-68) and Taganrog grammar school (1868-79). The family was forced to move to Moskow following his father's bankruptcy. At the age of 16, Chekhov became independent and remained for some time alone in his native town, supporting himself through private tutoring.
In 1879 Chekhov entered the Moskow University Medical School. While in the school, he started to publish hundreds of comic short stories to support himself and his mother, sisters and brothers. His publisher at this period was Nicholas Leikin, owner of the St. Petersburg journal Oskolki (splinters). His subjects were silly social situations, marital problems, farcical encounters between husbands, wives, mistresses, and lovers, whims of young women, of whom Chekhov had not much knowledge - the author was was shy with women even after his marriage. His works appeared in St. Petersburg daily papers, Peterburskaia gazeta from 1885, and Novoe vremia from 1886.
Chekhov's first novel, Nenunzhaya pobeda (1882), set in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Hungarian writer Mor Jokai. As a politician Jokai was also mocked for his ideological optimism. By 1886 Chekhov had gained a wide fame as a writer. His second full-length novel, The Shooting Party, was translated into English in 1926. Agatha Christie used its characters and atmosphere in her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926).
Chekhov graduated in 1884, and practiced medicine until 1892. In 1886 Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him to become a regular contributor for the St. Petersburg daily Novoe vremya. His friendship with Suvorin ended in 1898 because of his objections to the anti-Dreyfus campaingn conducted by paper. But during these years Chechov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgemental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6. compassion."
Chekhov's fist book of stories (1886) was a success, and gradually he became a full-time writer. The author's refusal to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intellitentsia and he was criticized for dealing with serious social and moral questions, but avoiding giving answers. However, he was defended by such leading writers as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888.
The failure of his play The Wood Demon (1889) and problems with his novel made Chekhov to withdraw from literature for a period. In 1890 he travelled across Siberia to remote prison island, Sakhalin. There he conducted a detailed census of some 10,000 convicts and settlers condemned to live their lives on that harsh island. Chekhov hoped to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. It is probable that hard conditions on the island also worsened his own physical condition. From this journey was born his famous travel book The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin (1893-94). Chekhov returned to Russia via Singapore, India, Ceylon, and the Suez Canal. From 1892 to 1899 Chekhov worked in Melikhovo, and in Yalta from 1899.
Chekhov was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1888. Next year he was elected a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. In 1900 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, but resigned his post two years later as a protest against the cancellation by the authorities of Gorky's election to the Academy. Later, in 1900, Gorky wrote to him: "After any of your stories, however insignificant, everything appears crude, as if written not by a pen, but by a cudgel."
As a short story writer Chekhov was phenomenally fast - he could compose a little sketch or a joke while just visiting at a newspaper office. During his career he produced several hundred tales. 'Palata No. 6' (1892, Ward Number Six) is Chekhov's classical story of the abuse of psychiatry. Gromov is convinced that anyone can be imprisoned. He develops a persecution mania and is incarcerated in a horrific asylum, where he meets Doctor Ragin. Their relationship attracts attention and the doctor is tricked into becoming a patient in his own ward. He dies after being beaten by a charge hand. - The symmetrical story has much similarities with such works as Samuel Fuller's film The Shock Corridor (1963), and Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over Cockoo's Nest (1975).
Today Chekhov's fame today rests primarily on his plays. He used ordinary conversations, pauses, noncommunication, nonhappening, incomplete thoughts, to reveal the truth behind trivial words and daily life. His characters belong often to the provincial middle class, petty aristocracy, or landowners of prerevolutionary Russia. They contemplate their unsatisfactory lives unable to make decisions and help themselves when a crisis breaks out.
Chekhov's first full-length plays were failures. When The Seagull was revised in 1898 by Stanislavsky at the Moskow Art Theatre, he gained also fame as a playwright. Among his masterpieces from this period is Uncle Vanya (1900), a melancholic story of Sonia and his brother-in-law Ivan (Uncle Vanya), who see their dreams and hopes passing in drudgery for others. The Three Sisters (1901) was set in a provincial garrison town. The talented Prozorov sisters, whose hopes have much in common with the Bronte sisters, recognize the uselessness of their lives and cling to one another for consolation. "If only we knew! If only we knew!" cries Olga at the end of the play.
The Cherry Orchaid (1904) reflected the larger developments in the Russian society. Mme Ranevskaias returns to her estate and finds out that the family house, together with the adjoining orchard, is to be auctioned. Her brother Gaev is too impractical to help in the crisis. The businessman Lopakhin purchases the estate and the orchard is demolished. "Everything on earth must come to an end..."
In these three famous plays Chekhov blended humor and tragedy. He left much room for imagination - his plays as well as his stories are in opposition to the concept of an artist as a mouthpiece of political change or social message. However, in his late years Chekhov supported morally the young experimental director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, who hoped to establish a revolutionary theater. Usually in Chekhov's dramas surprise and tension are not key elements, the dramatic movement is subdued, his characters do not fight, they endure their fate with patience. But in the process they perhaps discover something about themselves and their monotonous life.
Chekhov bought in 1892 a country estate in the village of Melikhove, where his best stories were written, including 'Neighbours' (1892), 'Ward Number Six', 'The Black Monk' (1894), 'The Murder' (1895), and 'Ariadne' (1895). He also served as a volunteer census taker, participated in famine relief, and worked as a medical inspector during cholore epidemics. In 1897 he fell ill with tuberculosis and lived since either abroad or in the Crimea.
Chekhov married in 1901 the Moscow Art Theater actress Olga Knipper (1870-1959), who had several years central roles in his plays on stage. In Yalta Chekhov wrote his famous stories 'The Man in a Shell,' 'Gooseberries,' 'About Love,' 'Lady with the Dog,' and 'In the Ravine.' His last great story, 'The Betrothed,' was an optimistic tale of a young woman who escapes from provincial dullness into personal freedom. Tolstoy, who admired Chekhov's fiction, did not think much of his dramatic skills. When he met Chekhov in Yalta, he said: "Don't write any more plays, old thing." Chekhov himself thought that Tolstoy was already a very sick man at that time, but he lived longer than Chekhov.
Chekhov died on July 15, 1904, in Badenweiler, Germany. He was buried in the cemetery of the Novodeviche Monastery in Moscow. Though a celebrated figure by the Russian literary public at the time of his death, Chekhov remained rather unknown internationally until the years after World War I, when his works were translated into English.

Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel (19.08.1883 – 10.01.1971) - French fashion designer.

Coco Chanel (Gabrielle Bonheur) was a prominent French designer of clothes. She was born on August the 19th, 1883 in Saumur. Her mother died when she was hardly twelve. Her father didn’t want to take responsibility for five children and they were sent to the shelter for the poor. When Gabrielle was 18, she got a job of a shop-assistant at one clothing store. She spent her free time singing in cabarets. The song she often sang was called “Qui qu'a vu Coco”, which is why people started calling her Coco. Although she didn’t become a successful singer, she was noticed by one of the wealthy retired officers - Etienne Balsan.
He was fascinated by her performances and invited her to live in his Parisian house. At first, she liked living in a new, richly decorated house. However, it was difficult for her to get used to the status of a mistress. She spent years trying to understand what she actually wanted in life. Soon, she told Balsan that she wanted to become a milliner, but he only laughed at her idea. He said that there were so many milliners in Paris and Coco didn’t even have experience. Later, another man appeared in her life. It was Balsan’s English friend - Arthur Capel, also known as “Boy”. Since then, her life had radically changed. Arthur was a successful businessman with excellent entrepreneurial skills. He encouraged Coco to develop her idea and helped her to open her first store of ladies’ hats in Paris in 1910.
Three years later she opened a boutique in Deauville. From now on, she was a real businesswoman. Nothing could stop her neither the lack of experience, nor the First World War. She was an entrepreneur and a designer at the same time, creating her own elegant style. She became quickly recognizable among the famous ladies of Paris. Chanel became the first tailor who was the part of high society. She completely changed public opinion on designer’s labor. After the announcement of the Second World War, she closed all her showrooms as she understood that it was the wrong time for fashion. In 1944, she was arrested for a while because of the rumors about her affair with a German officer. After that she moved to Switzerland where she spent the next ten years.
Chanel’s glory was gradually disappearing, as the post-war fashion was mainly in the hands of Balenciaga and Dior houses. However, in 1953 she re-opened her salon in Paris and a year later she established her own fashion house. There was lots of criticizing in local newspapers, but she ignored them. All she needed was three years to restore her fame. Thus, a 70-year-old woman again changed the whole idea of fashion, making her style dominant. The great milliner died in 1971 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. Her style is still considered to be the most elegant in the history of fashion.

Maria Sharapova

Maria Sharapova (born 19.04.1987) - Russian sportswoman.

Maria was born April 19, 1987 in Nyagan, a town in western Siberia, where her parents, Yuri and Yelena, had fled from Belarus a year earlier to avoid radiation from Chernobyl. Still too close to the disaster site, her family left their home as refugees again when she was two-years-old. The Sharapovs (Maria uses the feminine Sharapova) settled for a while in the Black Sea town of Sochi, known then as a resort village and home of Russian tennis light, Yevgeny Kafelnikov. Yuri had been an engineer in Nyagan. But as the family bounced from on home to the next, he did anything he could just to keep them together.
An only child, Maria was encouraged by her parents to try everything, from dancing and music to athletics. She discovered tennis after her fourth birthday, when a family friend—Kafelnikov’s father—gave her one of his son’s old Dunlop tennis racquets. The die was cast. Maria hardly ever let that cut-down, cracked, destrung racquet out of her hand from the moment she picked it up. Every day she hit balls against the side of the house.
By the time Maria was six, local tennis coaches encouraged Yuri to take her to Moscow to be considered for the Russian Tennis Federation. There, she wowed RTF head coach Yuri Udkin, who felt she was the best tennis player he had ever seen.
But things were not so simple in Russia, where the old order was changing. The Russian government had increased its tennis development program after the sport had gained Olympic status in the early 1980s. But even though ample funding was available, Maria’s parents followed the advice of Martina Navratilova, who believed that the U.S. would be the best place for the youngster to receive her training. The Sharapovs had met Navratilova during an exhibition in Moscow. The tennis legend was happy to offer her assistance.
Maria emigrated to Bradenton, Florida with her father, but Yelena was forced to stay behind when she could not get a visa. Once there, father and daughter tried to get her accepted at the world-famous Bollettieri Sports Academy. They also learned to speak English, Maria picking up much of the language in a month's time.
Maria and her dad made the trip from Russia to Florida with a scant $1,000 in their bankroll, scraped together from their life savings and gifts from grandparents and friends. Yuri also added to the small nest egg by laboring in the mines of Siberia. Unsure even where Bradenton was, they eventually arrived in the Sunshine State amid catcalls from parents complaining Maria was an outsider, too young and not talented enough. Bolletieri, however, sensed something special in her. Maria began her education at his “dream factory”—the same tennis school that had produced the likes of Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, Mary Pierce and Jim Courier.
At first, Yuri had to pay for seven-year-old Maria to play at Bollettieri’s. To foot the bill, he worked at all manner of jobs, including maintaining the greens at a local golf course. The two grew even closer during this period. Maria tried to focus on tennis, while Yuri concentrated on their survival. She began entering 12-and-under tournaments, and acquitted herself quite well, ascending to #15 in her age group.
Around this time, Bollettieri offered a glimpse of Maria to execs at International Management Group, the global sports representation and marketing agency that owned his academy. They were blown away, and immediately put her on full scholarship.
Life became more comfortable for Maria and Yuri, but by no means easy. Jealous Russian rivals bad-mouthed her regularly. Her training regimen, meanwhile, intensified greatly. Video cameras recorded her every move during practice, both to break down her form and chronicle her behavior. Maria sat down with coaches to examine everything, from facial expressions to body language. The goal was to maximize her performance by channeling her emotions into positive outlets.
The hard work paid off. In 1997, Maria won the Eddie Herr International Junior Championships, upsetting Bernice Burlet in the first round in the 14-under division.
By age 11, Maria was splitting her time between IMG, her home just outside Tampa, and the Los Angeles courts of Robert Lansdorp, whom she took on as her primary coach. A year later, Yuri began to get impatient. At one point, Bollettieri had to explain to him that rules prevented the 12-year-old from competing as a professional.
In April of 2000, just a week short of her 13th birthday, Maria stole center stage when she battled back twice to win a fantastic match (7-6 (8-6), 6-4) against Myriam Casanova, and capture the title in Girls 16s of the Eddie Herr International Junior Tennis Championships.
Comparisons began to all-time greats like Seles. Though their games were different, Maria displayed the same determination and poise under pressure. For her efforts, she earned her sport’s first “Rising Star Award.”
In 2001, at the age of 14, Maria turned pro and made her debut at an ITF event in nearby Sarasota. She continued to work at the academy all year in preparation for 2002, when she would play a full schedule. Still unranked, Maria opened the following year on a high note, by advancing to the finals of the Australian Open juniors. Just 14, she was the youngest finalist in the tournament’s history. Demonstrating her penchant for grass courts, she did the same in the Wimbledon juniors in July. Afterwards, she told the press that she had the Williams sisters in her sights.
Months later, Maria was invited to play as a wild card in the Pacific Life Classic. In just her third pro event, she tore through Brie Rippner (5-7, 6-2, 6-2) in the opening round. Though she fell to Seles in her next match, she had done enough to garner a spot in the WTA Rankings at No. 532. Maria went on to reach the final at five consecutive ITF Circuit tournaments, winning three of them. She also played in Tokyo at the Japan Open, bowing out in the first round to Emmanuelle Gagliardi in three sets. She ended the year ranked 186 in the world.
Maria continued her climb in 2003. She started the year in impressive fashion, rolling through her preliminary matches to qualify for her first Grand Slam, the Australian Open. Her first opponent, 10th-seeded Renata Voracova, presented few problems, as Maria dispatched her 6-3, 7-5. She also had no trouble with Maria Goloviznina (6-3, 6-2) in the next round. In the her last match of the qualifier, Maria handled Alena Vaskova with ease, 6-1, 6-2 .
The opening round of the Australian Open wasn’t quite as kind to her. Maria lost to Klara Koukalova in two sets. In doubles, meanwhile, she teamed up with Marion Bartoli . The pair beat Eleni Daniilidou and Caroline Vis, before being eliminated by Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez.
Maria cracked the top 100 in the world rankings five months later at the DFS Classic in Birmingham, England. On her way to the semi-finals, she beat Evgenia Koulikovskaya, Nathalie Dechy, Marie Gaianet Mikaelian and Elena Dementieva. The real surprise came when she fell to Japan’s Shinobu Asogoe just a step away from the final.
As Maria’s game improved, her detractors also grew louder. The biggest knock against her was the noise level at which she played. Even if fans weren’t watching one of Maria’s matches, they could usually hear her grunting from the baseline. Her boisterous style threw off some opponents, who questioned whether she really needed to range around the court at such a high decibel level.
Maria silenced her cirtics at Wimbledon, which she entered as a wild card. Facing Ashley Harkleroad, another notably loud player, Maria won 6-2, 6-1. Next she disposed of Elena Bovina, setting up a showdown with 11th-seeded Jelena Dokic. With her shins bothering her, Maria—also playing mixed doubles with Alex Bogdanovic—had to excuse herself from that part of the draw. But she was ready for Dokic, earning a 6-4, 6-4 victory. Maria’s amazing run ended in the Round of 16 with a three-set defeat to Svetlana Kuznetsova. Still, she served notice that she was for real, as her ranking rose to 91.
Weeks later, in a tune-up for the U.S. Open, Maria put a scare into Kim Clijsters, extending her to three sets in a match in Los Angeles. But the hard courts at Flushing Meadows proved too much for her. After a tough victory over Virginia Ruano Pascual, she exited in the second round.
Heading into the fall, Maria remained poised for a breakthrough. She delivered in October, becoming the year’s youngest winner (16 years, five months, 16 days) on the WTA Tour by taking the singles and doubles (with Tamarine Tanasugarn) titles at the Japan Open. She and Tanasugarn kept on rolling in Luxembourg with another victory. Maria also reached the semis in the singles, dropping another compelling match to Clijsters. In her final event of season in Quebec City, Maria walked away with a second singles title, after Milagros Sequera was forced to retire in final with a fractured left ankle. Maria’s WTA ranking jumped to 31.
Back in Melbourne to begin 2004, Maria ran into problems at the Australia Open. She pulled out of the doubles with a leg injury, hoping to gut it out in the singles draw. But Anastasia Myskina sent her packing in the third round.
In February, Maria faltered again, at the Pan Pacific in Tokyo. After a first-round victory, she fell to Daniella Hantuchova. The news was better two weeks later, when Maria moved into the Top 25. Playing in Memphis, she reached the semis in singles, before getting ousted by eventual champion Vera Zvonareva. The loss was bittersweet, because Zvonareva was a friend, and the two were also paired in doubles. They came up short, however, in the final.
The next few months brought more ups and downs for Maria. She faced Serena Williams for the first time in her career, but had trouble figuring out her game and lost the match. In April, she surged to No. 19 in the world (making her one of six Russians that week in Top 20). Weeks later in Berlin, she advanced to the third round, and then lost to Jennifer Capriati. In Rome, Maria upset Elena Dementieva, but was defeated two rounds later by Farina Elia.
Maria went into the French Open unsure what to expect. Seeded 18 at Roland Garros, she whipped Zvonareva en route to her first quarter-final appearance in a Grand Slam event. But her bubble burst is in a straight-sets defeat to Paola Surez. Some critics wondered whether Maria was destined to be the next Anna Kournikova. She was eager to set herself apart.
In June, Maria made a statement on the grass at Birmingham by winning the singles and doubles titles. With her world ranking at 15, Maria was full of confidence heading into Wimbledon.
She opened the tournament by dispatching Yulia Beygelzimer, Anne Keothavong, Daniela Hantuchova, Amy Frazier in straight sets. The 13th-ranked Frazier gave Maria her first real test, surrendering few breaks in their 6-4, 7-5 struggle.
Japan’s Ai Sugiyama took a set from Maria for the first time in their quarter-final tilt, opening the match with a 7-5 victory. But Maria turned the tables in the second set, winning 7-5, and then closed out Sugiyama 6-1 to advance to the semis.
The turning point of Wimbledon for Maria came against Lindsay Davenport. The hard-hitting American overwhelmed her young opponent 6-2 in the opening set, and had control of the match in the second. That's when Maria did something few teenagers can do in this situation—she started banging winners and taking the match to the veteran. Minutes later Maria forced a tiebreaker, which she won 7-4. With Davenport nursing a sore knee, Maria closed her out 6-1 to reach the finals.
Maria faced Serena Williams in the final. The odds against a victory were astronomical, as Williams had six Grand Slam titles to here credit, along with a 20-match winning streak on grass. Maria’s best hope was to go toe-to-toe with the American slugger. She had beaten Sugiyama and Davenport—both powerful hitters—by bringing her A Game when they were less than their best. Would the same scenario play out a third time?
In one of the most stunning upsets in Wimbledon history, Maria triumphed 6-1, 6-4. Neither player served well, but Maria took chances on her second serve—struck at nearly 100 mph—and kept Williams on the defensive. Serena, who was clearly out of rhythm, seemed content to let Maria flame out. But it never happened. Maria became the third-youngest Wimbledon champion of the Open era, and the first Russian ever to win the All England title.
After her Wimbledon title, Maria—who vaulted into the Top 10, and surpassed $1 million in earnings for 2004—began the adjustment to life as a superstar. Citing a need for rest and recuperation, she cancelled her plans to play the JPMorgan Chase Open and Newport Beach Breakers, but kept her word and appeared at a children’s clinic with the New Haven Parks & Recreation summer camps. She also posted a couple of questionable losses, and is feeling the wrath of her compatriots, who have attacked her for being a Russian in American clothing.
Meanwhile, no one was handing Maria the U.S. Open title. The stars had aligned perfectly at Wimbledon, and she had ambushed a quartet of fine players. But now the entire tour was gunning for her. The book on Maria was that you could beat her by varying pace and strategy, and Mary Pierce proved this when she ran off the final five games of their match at Flushing Meadow to end Maria’s chances at a second straight Grand Slam title. Maria’s second serve was not clicking, and she refused to adjust. Fourteen double-faults later, she was watching Pierce wave to the cheering crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
No one in Maria's camp was panicking. With the pressure of the Open out of the way, she got back to the business of adding complexity to her game. In
the season-ending WTA Championship, Maria beat Anastasia Myskina in the semis to set up a rematch with Serena. She dropped the first set, and then bounced back to even the match. After watching Williams—who strained an abdominal muscle during their battle—win the first four games of the third set, Maria sucked it up and reeled off the next six to take the title. It marked only the second time all year a player had beaten Serena after losing the opening set.
The victory vaulted Maria into the Top 5 for the first time, giving her a final no. 4 ranking for the year. She finished with $2.5 million in prize money to top the women's tour.
If all goes as planned, Maria will be a lot harder to unnerve at 18 than she was at 17. In the meantime, Maria has proven she's more than just another pretty face; she has served noticed that she will continue to be the woman to beat at the majors.
In tennis, they say that winners make it happen, while losers hope it happens. Maria subscribes to this philosophy. Her aim is to quickly gain control of a point, pound the ball into the corner, and then come inside the baseline and attack her opponent. The better the opponent, the riskier this is—and the quicker Maria must be.
At the top level of women’s tennis, Maria’s opponents are still dangerous when cornered. As she charges toward the net, she must be prepared to execute a cross-court volley, down-the-line lunge, or deal with a perfectly placed floater. Above all, however, she must be mentally prepared to put away the next shot. Her coach, Robert Lansdorp, calls this “attacking blindly” and Maria is already one of the best ever at this approach.
Maria’s serve triggers much of her game. Her first serve is one of the better ones in the game, but still lacks consistency. She is unafraid, however, to launch an equally hard second serve, so the receiver can never dictate a point. If Maria’s second serve is off, then she’s in trouble.
As Maria gains more experience and develops more strength and consistency, she may decide to alter her approach. But for now, her strategy suits her strokes, as witnessed by her humiliation of Serena Williams at Wimbledon.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger (born 30.07.1947) - American actor, sportsman and politician.

While his police-chief father wanted him to become a soccer player, Austrian-born actor Arnold Schwarzenegger opted instead for a bodybuilding career. Born July 30, 1947, in the small Austrian town of Graz, Schwarzenegger went on to win several European contests and international titles (including Mr. Olympia) and then came to the U.S. for body-building exhibitions, billing himself immodestly but fairly accurately as "The Austrian Oak." Though his thick Austrian accent and slow speech patterns led some to believe that the Austrian Oak was shy a few leaves, Schwarzenegger was, in fact, a highly motivated and intelligent young man. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in business and economics, he invested his contest earnings in real estate and a mail-order bodybuilding equipment company.
A millionaire before the age of 22, Schwarzenegger decided to try acting. Producers were impressed by his physique but not his mouthful of a last name, so it was as Arnold Strong that he made his film bow in the low-budget spoof Hercules in New York (1970) (with a dubbed voice). He reverted to his own name for the 1976 film Stay Hungry, then achieved stardom as "himself" in the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron. In The Villain (1979), a cartoon-like Western parody, he played "Handsome Stranger," exhibiting a gift for under-stated comedy that would more or less go unexploited for many years thereafter. With Conan the Barbarian (1982) and its sequel, Conan the Destroyer (1984), the actor established himself as an action star, though his acting was backtracking into two-dimensionality (understandably, given the nature of the Conan role). As the murderous android title character in The Terminator (1984), Schwarzenegger became a bona fide box-office draw, and also established his trademark of coining repeatable catch phrases in his films: "I'll be back," in Terminator, "Consider this a divorce," in Total Recall (1990), and so on.
As Danny De Vito's unlikely pacifistic sibling in Twins (1988), Schwarzenegger received the praise of critics who noted his "unsuspected" comic expertise (quite forgetting The Villain). In Kindergarten Cop (1991), Schwarzenegger played a hard-bitten police detective who found his true life's calling as a schoolteacher (his character was a cop only because it was expected of him by his policeman father, which could have paralleled his own life). Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), wherein Schwarzenegger exercised his star prerogative and insisted that the Terminator become a good guy, was the most expensive film ever made up to its time -- and one of the biggest moneymakers. The actor's subsequent action films were equally as costly; sometimes the expenditures paid off, while other times the result was immensely disappointing -- for the box-office disappointment Last Action Hero (1992), Schwarzenegger refreshingly took full responsibility, rather than blaming the failure on his production crew or studio as other "superstars" have been known to do.
A rock-ribbed Republican despite his marriage to JFK's niece, Maria Shriver (with whom he has four children), Schwarzenegger was appointed by George Bush in 1990 as chairman of the President's Council of Physical Fitness and Sports, a job he took as seriously and with as much dedication as any of his films. A much-publicized investment in the showbiz eatery Planet Hollywood increased the coffers in Schwarzenegger's already bulging bank account. Schwarzenegger then added directing to his many accomplishments, piloting a few episodes of the cable-TV series Tales From the Crypt as well as a 1992 remake of the 1945 film Christmas in Connecticut.
Schwarzenegger bounced back from the disastrous Last Action Hero with 1994's True Lies, which, despite its mile-wide streak of misogyny and its gaping plot and logic holes, was one of the major hits of that summer's movie season. Following the success of True Lies, Schwarzenegger went back to doing comedy with Junior, co-starring with Emma Thompson and his old Twins accomplice Danny De Vito. The film met with critically mixed results, although it fared decently at the box office. Undeterred, Schwarzenegger continued down the merry, if treacherous, path of alternating action with comedy with 1996's Eraser and Jingle All the Way, the latter of which proved to be both a critical bomb and a box-office disappointment. In a move that suggested he had realized that audiences wanted him back in the world of assorted weaponry and explosives, Schwarzenegger returned to the action realm with 1997's Batman Robin, which unfortunately proved to be a huge critical disappointment, although, in the tradition of most Schwarzenegger action films, it did manage to gross well over 100 million dollars at the box office and over 130 million dollars more the world over.
The turn of the century found Schwarzenegger's star losing some of its luster with a pair of millennial paranoia films, 1999's End of Days and 2000's The 6th Day. The former film -- in which a security consultant has to save the world from Satan -- was critically lambasted and, despite a powerful opening weekend, failed to recoup its cost in the States. The latter film -- a cloning parable which bore more than a passing resemblance to Total Recall -- received more positive notices, but took in less than half the receipts Days did just one year prior. Perhaps as a response to these failures, Schwarzenegger prepped three films reminiscent of former successes, all scheduled for release in 2001 and 2002: the terrorist action thriller Collateral Damage, True Lies 2, and the long-anticipated Terminator 3. Though Collateral Damage received a chilly reception at the box office and the development of True Lies 2 fell into question, longtime fans of the cigar chomping strongman rejoiced when Arnold resumed his role as a seriously tough cyborg in Terminator 3. Though slated to make a cameo in director Frank Coraci's adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days, Arnold's most notable new role is political -- Schwarzenegger replaced Gray Davis as governor of California in the widely lauded, highly controversial recall election of 2003. Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.

Taras Shevchenko

Taras Shevchenko (9.03. [O.S. 25.02.] 1814 – 10.03. [O.S. 26.02.] 1861)) - Ukrainian writer

Taras Shevchenko was a prominent Ukrainian poet, folklorist and a public figure. His literary heritage is huge and valuable for the modern Ukrainian language. In the second half of the 20th century his followers even released a special encyclopedia called “Shevchenko Dictionary”. The poet was born on March 9th 1814 in Moryntsi village of the Kiev Governorate. His parents were serf peasants and he was the third child in the family. It is believed that his forefathers were brave Cossacks from the Zaporozhian Host, which he often mentioned in his literary works.
Most of Taras’s childhood was spent in Kyrylivka. When he was almost ten, his mother died. Two years later his father also died. From the age of twelve he was a lone, homeless child. Soon, he became the deacons’ servant. They taught him how to draw and write. At that time he started reading Hryhoryi Skovoroda’s works. In 1829, he became the servant of one rich landowner, whose name was Engelhardt. The latter had noticed Taras’s passion for painting and decided to train him as a personal painter. In 1838, thanks to some prominent people, such as Briullov, Venetsianov and Zhukovsky, Shevchenko was bought off his landlord. In the same year he managed to enter the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.
As a sign of respect to Zhukovsky, Shevchenko dedicated to him one of his greatest works - the poem “Katerina”. In 1842 he created a painting for this poem, which became the only surviving picture of that period. The peak of his writing creativity fell on 1840-1846. This was the time when he published a collection of poems “Kobzar”. He also wrote the well-known works “Haydamaky” (1841) and “Naymichka” (1845). In 1847 he was arrested for participation in the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. He was also disallowed to write poems or draw pictures. In the years 1848-1849 he took part in the Aral Sea study expedition. He was assigned to sketch the local scenery.
When this became known he was sent to exile to Novopetrovskoye, which is now called Fort Shevchenko. He stayed there till 1857 and then returned to St. Petersburg. His life at the fort is well known by “Diary” which he led in Russian. In 1859, he visited Ukraine. The outstanding poet and writer died in 1861. Before his death he spent some time compiling textbooks for Ukrainian schools. He was buried at the Orthodox cemetery in St. Petersburg. Two months later his ashes were reburied in Kanev, Ukraine, in accordance with his will.

Yuri Shevchuk

Yuri Shevchuk (born 16.05.1957) - Russian singer.

Yuri Shevchuk, born 16 May 1957, is a Russian singer/songwriter who leads the rock band DDT, which he founded with Vladimir Sigachev in 1981.
Shevchuk was born in the village of Yagodny in Magadanskaya oblast and raised in Ufa, Russia, though he now resides in St. Petersburg, Russia. Shevchuck was an art teacher before founding DDT. He is best known for his distinctive, somewhat gravely voice. His lyrics detail aspects of Russian life with a wry, humanistic sense of humor.
DDT concerts are usually remarkable for the audience singing along to the well-known lyrics. He is also very famous for openly opposing pop music. He is often accredited for being the greatest song-writer in present-Russia.
Shevchuk is highly critical against the undemocratic society that has grown in Putin's Russia. On March 3, 2008 he participated in an Other Russia demonstration in St Petersburg against the president elections where no real opposition candidates were allowed to run.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (26.04.1564 - 23.04.1616) - English poet and playwright.

For all his fame and celebration, William Shakespeare remains a mysterious figure with regards to personal history. There are just two primary sources for information on the Bard: his works, and various legal and church documents that have survived from Elizabethan times. Naturally, there are many gaps in this body of information, which tells us little about Shakespeare the man.
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, allegedly on April 23, 1564. Church records from Holy Trinity Church indicate that he was baptized there on April 26, 1564. Young William was born of John Shakespeare, a glover and leather merchant, and Mary Arden, a landed local heiress. William, according to the church register, was the third of eight children in the Shakespeare household—three of whom died in childhood. John Shakespeare had a remarkable run of success as a merchant, alderman, and high bailiff of Stratford, during William's early childhood. His fortunes declined, however, in the late 1570s.
There is great conjecture about Shakespeare's childhood years, especially regarding his education. It is surmised by scholars that Shakespeare attended the free grammar school in Stratford, which at the time had a reputation to rival that of Eton. While there are no records extant to prove this claim, Shakespeare's knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek would tend to support this theory. In addition, Shakespeare's first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, wrote that John Shakespeare had placed William "for some time in a free school." John Shakespeare, as a Stratford official, would have been granted a waiver of tuition for his son. As the records do not exist, we do not know how long William attended the school, but certainly the literary quality of his works suggest a solid education. What is certain is that William Shakespeare never proceeded to university schooling, which has stirred some of the debate concerning the authorship of his works.
The next documented event in Shakespeare's life is his marriage to Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582. William was 18 at the time, and Anne was 26—and pregnant. Their first daughter, Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583. The couple later had twins, Hamnet and Judith, born February 2, 1585 and christened at Holy Trinity. Hamnet died in childhood at the age of 11, on August 11, 1596.
For the seven years following the birth of his twins, William Shakespeare disappears from all records, finally turning up again in London some time in 1592. This period, known as the "Lost Years," has sparked as much controversy about Shakespeare's life as any period. Rowe notes that young Shakespeare was quite fond of poaching, and may have had to flee Stratford after an incident with Sir Thomas Lucy, whose deer and rabbits he allegedly poached. There is also rumor of Shakespeare working as an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire for a time, though this is circumstantial at best.
It is estimated that Shakespeare arrived in London around 1588 and began to establish himself as an actor and playwright. Evidently, Shakespeare garnered envy early on for his talent, as related by the critical attack of Robert Greene, a London playwright, in 1592: "...an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country."
Greene's bombast notwithstanding, Shakespeare must have shown considerable promise. By 1594, he was not only acting and writing for the Lord Chamberlain's Men (called the King's Men after the ascension of James I in 1603), but was a managing partner in the operation as well. With Will Kempe, a master comedian, and Richard Burbage, a leading tragic actor of the day, the Lord Chamberlain's Men became a favorite London troupe, patronized by royalty and made popular by the theatre-going public.
Shakespeare's success is apparent when studied against other playwrights of this age. His company was the most successful in London in his day. He had plays published and sold in octavo editions, or "penny-copies" to the more literate of his audiences. Never before had a playwright enjoyed sufficient acclaim to see his works published and sold as popular literature in the midst of his career. In addition, Shakespeare's ownership share in both the theatrical company and the Globe itself made him as much an entrepeneur as artist. While Shakespeare might not be accounted wealthy by London standards, his success allowed him to purchase New House and retire in comfort to Stratford in 1611.
William Shakespeare wrote his will in 1611, bequeathing his properties to his daughter Susanna (married in 1607 to Dr. John Hall). To his surviving daughter Judith, he left ?300, and to his wife Anne left "my second best bed." William Shakespeare allegedly died on his birthday, April 23, 1616. This is probably more of a romantic myth than reality, but Shakespeare was interred at Holy Trinity in Stratford on April 25. In 1623, two working companions of Shakespeare from the Lord Chamberlain's Men, John Heminges and Henry Condell, printed the First Folio edition of his collected plays, of which half were previously unpublished.
William Shakespeare's legacy is a body of work that will never again be equaled in Western civilization. His words have endured for 400 years, and still reach across the centuries as powerfully as ever. Even in death, he leaves a final piece of verse as his epitaph:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

Mikhail Sholokhov

Mikhail Sholokhov (24.05. (O.S. 11.05.) 1905 - 21.02.1984) - Russian writer.

Sholokhov was born in the Kamenskaya region of Russia, in the "land of the Cossacks" - the Kruzhlinin hamlet, part of stanitsa Veshenskaya, the former Region of the Don Cossack Army. His father was a member of the lower middle class, at times a farmer, cattle trader, and miller. Sholokhov's mother came from Ukrainian peasant stock and was the widow of a Cossack. She was illiterate but learned to read and write in order to correspond with her son. Sholokhov attended schools in Kargin, Moscow, Boguchar, and Veshenskaya until 1918, when he joined the side of the revolutionaries in the Russian civil war. He was only 13 years old.
Sholokhov began writing at 17. The Birthmark, Sholokhov's first story, appeared when he was 19. In 1922 Sholokhov moved to Moscow to become a journalist, but he had to support himself through manual labour. He was a stevedore, stonemason, and accountant from 1922 to 1924, but he also intermittently participated in writers "seminars". His first work to appear in print was the satirical article A Test (1922).
In 1924 Sholokhov returned to Veshenskaya and devoted himself entirely to writing. In the same year he married Maria Petrovna Gromoslavskaia; they had two daughters and two sons.
His first book Tales from the Don, a volume of stories about the Cossacks of his native region during World War I and the Russian Civil War, was published in 1926. In the same year Sholokhov began writing And Quiet Flows the Don which earned the Stalin Prize and took him fourteen years to complete (1926-1940). It became the most-read work of Soviet fiction and was heralded as a powerful example of socialist realism, and won him the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. Virgin Soil Upturned, which earned the Lenin Prize, took 28 years to complete. It was composed of two parts: Seeds of Tomorrow (1932) and Harvest on the Don (1960), and reflects life during collectivization in the Don area. The short story The Fate of a Man (1957) was made into a popular Russian film and his unfinished novel They Fought for Their Country is about the Great Patriotic War.
During World War II Sholokhov wrote about the Soviet war efforts for various journals. His collected works was published in eight volumes between 1956 and 1960.
Sholokhov has been accused, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn among others, of plagiarizing And Quiet Flows the Don. The evidence was largely circumstantial: Sholokhov's age at the time of its composition and, in particular, the gulf in quality between his masterpiece and his other works. To complicate matters, Sholokhov could produce no rough drafts of Don, claiming that they had been destroyed by the Germans during World War II. A 1984 monograph by Geir Kjetsaa and others demonstrated through statistical analyses that Sholokhov was indeed the likely author of Don. And in 1987, several thousand pages of notes and drafts of the work were discovered and authenticated.

Viktor Tsoi/Tsoy

Viktor Tsoi/Tsoy (21.06.1962 - 15.08.1990) - Soviet rock musician.

Viktor Robertovich Tsoi/ Tsoy was a famous Soviet artist and leader of the rock group Kino. Tsoi was born to a Korean father and Russian mother on June 21, 1962 in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia). Tsoi's mother, Valentina Vasilyevna, was a teacher and his father, Robert Maximovich, was an engineer. Tsoi's Korean family name is usually transcribed in English as Choi or Choe. He married Marianna Tsoi in 1985 and had a son with her--Alexander (Sasha).
He is regarded as one of the pioneers of Russian rock and has a huge following in the countries of the former Soviet Union even today, as of 2007. Few musicians in the history of Russian music have been more popular or have had more impact on their genre than Victor Tsoi and his rock band Kino. Any discussion of Kino must inevitably begin and end with the creator, writer and lead singer of the band, a man who was once called the "last hero of Russian rock" and a "legend". The band was born when he was, lived when he did, and died with him in a tragic accident. The life of Victor Tsoi is the life of Kino.
Unfortunately, after contributing a plethora of musical and artistic works, including ten albums, he died in a car accident on August 15, 1990.
Victor Tsoi was born in Leningrad in 1962. He began writing songs at the age of 17. His early songs discussed themes like life on the streets of Leningrad, love and hanging out with friends. Many heroes in his songs were young men with limited opportunities trying to survive in a tough world. During this time, rock was an underground movement limited to mostly Leningrad; Moscow pop stars ruled the charts and received the most exposure from the media. The Soviet government gave grants to artists who they liked, they provided them with housing, recording studios and anything else they may have needed to succeed. Unfortunately rock music was not too popular with the government. Thus rock bands received little or no funding, they were not given any exposure by the state-run media and was given the stereotype as the music listened by drug addicts and hoodlums. In 1974, Victor Tsoi went to the Serov Artistic Academy, but was expelled from there at the age of 18. The reason for the expulsion was "poor grades", however it didn't help that he was involved heavily in the rock music scene. By this time Tsoi had began to perform the songs he wrote at parties. During one of these performances he was noticed by Boris Grebenshchikov, a member of the established rock group "Aquarium". Grebenshikov took Tsoi under his wing and helped him start up his own band. This signaled the beginning of Tsoi's rock music career.
Leningrad's Rock Club was one of the few public places where rock bands were allowed to perform. It was here in 1982, at their first annual Rock Concert that Victor Tsoi made his stage debut. He was playing as a solo artist supported by two "Aquarium" members. Tsoi's innovative lyrics and music impressed the crowd.
Before making it big, Tsoi said that the problem with music was that no one wanted to take chances. He wanted to experiment with lyrics and music in order to create something fresh that no one had ever heard before. Tsoi succeeded in his goal. Shortly after the concert he recruited other musicians and they formed "Kino", which in Russian means "cinema". They recorded a demo tape at Tsoi's apartment. This tape was quickly passed around Leningrad, then all over the country by rock enthusiasts. Kino was beginning to gain a following.
In 1982, Kino released their first album titled "45". This album first showed Tsoi's willingness to approach political topics in his music, something not too many other artists were willing to do. In his song Suburban Electric Train he discussed a man stuck in a train that was taking him where he didn't wish to go; this was clearly a metaphor for life in the Soviet Union, and the band was quickly banned from performing this song live. Regardless, the political message of the song made it popular among the youth of the anti-establishment movement that now began to look to Victor Tsoi and "Kino" as their idols.

Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison (11.02.1847 - 18.10.1931) - American inventor.

Thomas A. Edison was an outstanding inventor and one of the best entrepreneurs of America. Many of his creations have literally changed the world and shaped its modern face. Born in Ohio in1847, he spent his childhood in Michigan. At young age he wasn’t particularly successful at studies, partly because of some hearing problems he experienced.
His first job as an operator was connected with an unexpected story. He once saved the life of a little boy who had nearly gotten under the train. The boy’s father in gratitude helped Edison to get a job at the local telegraph station. Later on, he worked at other stations as well, but he always tried to get the night shifts. At the daytime he read various scientific books and led all sorts of experiments.
His professional inventions started in Newark. To be precise it was his first phonograph that brought him fame and success. A lot was achieved at the industrial research laboratory which he established in California. To build this lab he sold one of his first inventions, which he nominated in four or five thousands, but was paid ten thousand dollars. It’s obvious that the inventor didn’t know how much his works really cost.
His inventions can be listed endlessly. He made sufficient contributions into the field of recording, cinematography, telephone network, electrification of the country, etc. Considerable fame was reached on the basis of telegraph. Only studying this device, Thomas learned the principles of electricity. However, one of his world-famous inventions became the light bulb, which is an internationally recognized fact.
In 1889 Edison was invited to the World Exhibition to Paris, where he was awarded the Legion of Honor. During the war he was invited to be the head of the Advisory Board of the US Navy. Even after retiring he retained good imagination and enthusiasm. He had a lab at one of his shops where he spent most of his free time.
At an advanced age he worked on improving radio and film equipment, the wireless telegraph, even vehicles and aircraft. When he was over eighty he started researching some American plants which were related to synthetic rubber. He died in Glenmont on October 18, 1931.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (14.03.1879 - 18.05.1955) - English physicist.

Albert Einstein was an outstanding German-born theoretical physicist and one of the fathers of modern physics. He received a Nobel Prize in Physics and was an Honorary Doctor of about 20 leading universities in the world. Einstein wrote more than 300 scientific papers and 150 books on the history and essence of science. He was born on March 14th, 1879, in Ulm, in the family of a salesman. His father and his uncle were the founders of one electrical equipment company. His mother was a housewife. When he was still a toddler, his family moved to Munchen where Albert attended a Catholic elementary school. Later, he transferred to Gymnasium, which now has his name. When he turned 14, he moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Zurich Polytechnic School. Starting from 1909, he taught at this educational institution and became a Professor.
At the age of 34, he was already the director of the Institute of Physics and a Professor of the University of Berlin. In 1933 he was forced to leave Germany by the Nazis. He moved to the USA then and lectured there at Princeton until his death. His three important scientific works on the theory of relativity, the Brownian motion and quantum theory were published already in 1905. The next year, he created the formula about the relation between mass and energy. In 1916, he predicted the phenomenon of induced radiation of atoms. A year later he completed the general theory of relativity. His theory for the first time in science showed the link between the space-time geometry and distribution of mass in the universe. This theory was based on Newton’s gravitational law. Although Einstein’s theories seemed too revolutionary for that time, it soon received a number of confirmations.
In 1920s and 1930s the anti-Semitism was gradually gaining popularity in Germany. His theory of relativity became a subject of criticism. When the scientific work became impossible in his native country, he moved to the USA. There, he instantly received a professorship at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. Unified field theory became the subject of his scientific research for the last twenty years of his life. He tried to bring the theory of gravitation and electromagnetic field together. During the Second World War, he heard of the German uranium project and wrote an open letter to the US President Franklin warning about the possible consequences of the Nazi’s creation of atomic bomb. Shortly before his death, Einstein signed a petition addressed to the governments of all countries, warning them about the dangers of hydrogen bomb and nuclear weapons.
An outstanding and brilliant physicist died on April 18th, 1955. During his life he had a great number of honorary awards and world recognition. He had once received an offer to become the president of Israel, which he politely refused. In 1999, «The Times» magazine named him the man of the century. Einstein was married twice. He met his first wife when he was studying in Zurich. The couple had two sons. In 1919, he got a divorce and married his widowed cousin Elsa, who died in 1936. In his free time he liked playing the violin and was rather good at it. Another cherished hobby of the scientist was sailing.