Biography Planet

UK Parliament: Referendum for Indian occupied Kashmir according to UN charter

2019-09-10T06:15:00.001-07:00

Hey,

I just signed the petition "UK Parliament: Referendum for Indian occupied Kashmir according to UN charter" and wanted to see if you could help by adding your name.

Our goal is to reach 150,000 signatures and we need more support. You can read more and sign the petition here:

http://chng.it/YvGzkMxcFP

Thanks!
Iqbal

Axell Hodges (motocross competitor)

2019-07-07T05:02:00.000-07:00

Axell Hodges is a six-time X Games medalist and motocross competitor. He crashed and injured both ankles while practicing for the longest motorcycle jump in history.

Who Is Axell Hodges?

Axell "Slay" Hodges is an X Games gold medal motocross competitor known for his multifaceted athletics and style. Garnering a huge social media following, he is known for his unique moto videos.

Early Life

Born on August 20, 1996, in Encinitas, California, Hodges grew up watching his father and two older brothers racing dirt bikes and being a fan of motocross champ Jeremy McGrath. Hodges began riding at age eight and broke ground when he won the Loretta Lynn's national amateur race in 2012.
Hodges built ramps in his backyard to practice his tricks, although he admits he's got to be careful not to disturb the neighbors.
"We have a couple neighbors that are up above, and it echoes off the canyons, so they're pretty bummed on it. We've been [living in Encinitas] for like 25 years, and everyone knows my dad from my Snapchat and stuff — he's kind of the crazy guy who gets s**t done," Hodges explains. "We put spark arrestors in the pipes, and when I hit the ramps I try not to rev it and go complete X Games-mode on everyone. I try to keep it mellow and just ride at the right times of the day. I keep it minimum to around 30 minutes to an hour at most."
Axell Hodges is a six-time X Games medalist and motocross competitor. He crashed and injured both ankles while practicing for the longest motorcycle jump in history.

Who Is Axell Hodges?

Axell "Slay" Hodges is an X Games gold medal motocross competitor known for his multifaceted athletics and style. Garnering a huge social media following, he is known for his unique moto videos.

Early Life

Sir Lionel (Knights)

2012-01-07T04:31:00.000-08:00

Sir Lionel is the younger son of King Bors of Gaunnes (or Gaul) and Evaine and brother of Bors the Younger in Arthurian legend. He is a double cousin of Lancelot and cousin of Lancelot's younger half-brother Ector de Maris (not to be confused with the older Sir Ector, who was King Arthur's foster-father). When their father dies in battle against King Claudas, Lionel and Bors are rescued by the Lady of the Lake and raised in her underwater kingdom alongside her foster-son Lancelot. Like all his family, Lionel becomes a Knight of the Round Table.

Arthurian legend

While traveling with Lancelot as a young man, Lionel is captured by the rogue knight Turquine, who whips him with briars and throws him in the dungeon. The scenario repeats itself later while he is on the Quest for the Holy Grail, where he proves very unworthy of the blessed object by trying to kill his brother for not rescuing him. Bors had seen Lionel getting beaten and led away, but had to make a decision to save either him or a young girl being dragged in the opposite direction. He saves the girl, and fears Lionel dead. But Lionel escapes, and attacks Bors the next time they meet. Bors proves himself worthy of the Grail when he refuses to fight back, and Lionel kills a religious hermit and Sir Calogrenant, a fellow Knight of the Round Table, when they try to protect Bors from his wrath. Before Lionel can strike his brother, however, God intervenes and immobilizes him.

Lionel and the rest of his family follow Lancelot into exile when the affair with Guinevere is exposed. Lionel participates in the battles against Arthur's forces, and becomes King of Gaunnes. After the Battle of Camlann, Lancelot's family returns to Britain to defeat the remainder of Mordred's forces. Lionel is slain by Mordred's son Melehan; Bors avenges his death.

Later appearances

Sir Lionel is the subject of the late-medieval folk ballad "Sir Lionel", recorded as Child Ballad 18, in which he slays a giant wild boar.[1] This song has much in common with a medieval tale about a knight who slays a terrifyingly fiendish boar in Sidon, in the fourteenth century romance of Sir Eglamour of Artois.[2] The terrible swine is a frequent foe in romantic tales, for instance the beast Twrch Trwyth in Culhwch and Olwen.[3] The song was recorded in Appalachia as late as the early 20th century. Popular variants include "Old Bangum" and "Wild Hog."

In the musical Camelot, Lionel is the knight brought back to life by Lancelot after he accidentally kills him in a Joust. Lionel appears in the 1998 Warner Bros. animated film Quest for Camelot as the father of the protagonist, Kayley, who wished to follow her father's footsteps. During the beginning of the film, Lionel is killed by the main antagonist, Sir Ruber, who intends to claim the throne of Camelot for himself, while trying to kill King Arthur, whom Lionel defended before he died.

Sir Percival (Knights)

2012-01-07T04:27:00.000-08:00

Percival was the son of Sir Thomas Willoughby (d 1596) of Bore Place, Kent, a first cousin of Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton, and his second wife Catherine Hart. Percival went abroad soon after his arranged marriage to his cousin Bridget Willoughby, and on his return the couple lived alternately with their respective in-laws. By 1595 Percival and his family were living at Middleton. His father-in-law's second marriage that year threatened to disinherit Percival from his expected estates, but Sir Francis and his new wife had just one child, a daughter, who soon died. As no will had been left, Percival had to engage in lawsuits in order to clarify the division of the estates between Bridget and her sisters. He eventually inherited the six principal manors of Wollaton, Sutton Passeys, Cossall, Trowell, Middleton and Kingsbury, plus other estates in Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire. In addition, he inherited most of his own father's estates in Kent, although these were also disputed by family members.

Percival and Bridget moved into the new Wollaton Hall in 1599. In 1603 Percival was knighted, and entertained Queen Anne and Prince Henry at Wollaton Hall. Sir Percival was elected as a Member of Parliament in 1604. Hoping to raise some money to help pay his extensive debts, in 1602 Percival leased a coal mine at Strelley in partnership with Huntingdon Beaumont. He built the first railway in Britain there, using wooden rails, in 1605, but the pit was unprofitable. He also invested in a company aiming to set up farms in Newfoundland, and in a Wollaton glassworks company.

Sir Percival suffered many years of ill health after the death of his wife in 1629. He died in August 1643.

Ferdinand Magellan (Explorars)

2012-01-07T03:35:00.000-08:00

The discovery of the New World to the west had been a bitter disappointment. Although riches of various kinds were found, the new land did not have the valued spices of the Orient. The search for a sea route to the East led to what is called the Age of Discovery, a time wherein the greatest sea adventures and explorations in history were undertaken. Europeans were eager to try new and faster routes to the spice markets of the Indies. Spices were highly valued for several reasons. They made the otherwise bland and spoiled food taste better. They could also be used for perfume or medicine. Spices such as pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, or cloves were like treasures to Europeans. All these products were produced in India, Ceylon, and the Moluccas (known as the Spice Islands).

Because the spice trade could make them wealthy, explorers were motivated to find a faster and cheaper sea route. The European routes were blocked by powerful rivals such as the Italian city-states of Venice and Genoa and later the Turkish merchants of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). Their ships had control of the eastern Mediterranean where trade with the Arabs abounded. After Vasco da Gama's famous voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, the Portuguese had to battle Muslim forces and rival traders to gain a piece of the spice trade. The rulers of Portugal and Spain sought different routes to the Indies. While the Portuguese concentrated their efforts to the south and east, the Spanish sought alternative routes to the west.

The Treaty of Tordesillas

On June 7, 1494, the Spanish and the Portuguese signed a treaty to divide the world in two. The dividing line ran through the Atlantic with Spain gaining lands to the west including most of the Americas. Brazil was granted to Portugal. The eastern half including Africa and India was given to Portugal. Without accurate measurements of longitude, the question of where the line should be drawn in Asia persisted.

King Manuel I of Portugal sent many fleets to Brazil. One of the officers among the fleets sent out in 1501 was an Italian named Amerigo Vespucci. He was among the first explorers to report that South America was a continent, not an island. An excellent mapmaker, Vespucci sold copies of maps of coastal South America to a German cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller. When the maps were reproduced, Vespucci was given credit with his name written on the land portion of the map. Misunderstanding the meaning, many thought the land was named "America."

Ferdinand Magellan

The first circumnavigation of the globe was led by Ferdinand Magellan. He was born in the spring of 1480 to a family of lower nobility. Educated in the Portuguese court, Magellan proved himself in many battles in the name of his country. Like Columbus before him, Magellan believed he could get to the Spice Islands by sailing west. He knew he would have to sail around or through the New World to do so. Like so many explorers before him, he thought the earth was much smaller than it actually is. Snubbed by the Portuguese king, Magellan easily convinced the teenaged Spanish king, Charles I (also known as the Holy Roman emperor Charles V) that at least some of the Spice Islands lay in the Spanish half of the undiscovered world.

King Charles approved Magellan's plan and granted him generous funds on March 22, 1518. With money from the king, the explorer was able to obtain five ships (possibly naos) called the Trinidad, the San Antonio, the Concepcion, the Victoria, and the Santiago. In September 1519, he set sail with 270 men.

A good deal of what we know of the voyage of Magellan came from an Italian crewmember, Antonio Pigafetta. Pigafetta kept a diary of the voyage and remained a staunch supporter of the Portuguese explorer. Like Columbus, Magellan was a foreigner in charge of Spanish captains, and like Columbus, his voyage was fraught with problems. Spanish captains Juan de Cartagena of the San Antonio, Gaspar de Quesada of the Concepcion, and Luis de Mendoza of the Victoria were plotting to kill Magellan.

After a brief stop at the Canary Islands, Magellan's fleet set sail for Brazil on a southwest course. Cartagena, the ringleader of a mutiny attempt, was relieved of his command of the San Antonio and held prisoner aboard the Victoria. After crossing the equator on November 20, 1519, the crew sighted Brazil on December 6. Magellan thought it unwise to go near the Portuguese territory since he was sailing under the Spanish flag. His fleet eventually anchored off the coast of present-day Rio de Janeiro, out of the way of the Portuguese, on December 13th. After stocking up on fresh food and water, the fleet made its way down the east coast of South America looking for a passage to the Pacific Ocean. The farther south they sailed, the colder the weather. The weather was so bad, the fleet decided to spend the winter in Patagonia. The area where they settled on March 31, 1520, was called San Julian.

When Magellan reached Patagonia (present-day Argentina), another mutiny was attempted. Cartagena, released by Captain Mendoza, attempted once again to take over the fleet and have Magellan killed. The Portuguese explorer was able to put down the rebellion by marooning Cartagena in the barren Patagonia, imprisoning some, and having Quesada and other rebels executed.

During the cold summer months, Magellan sent the Santiago on a reconnaissance mission down the coast to look for a passage to the other side of the continent. Unfortunately in May, the Santiago wrecked in rough seas. In the latter half of August, Magellan decided it was time to move the remaining four ships south to look for a passage. Finally in October, the fleet sighted a strait and started through it. Magellan named it the strait of All Saints, but it later was named after him.

The strait was a tricky passage that took the fleet thirty-eight days to pass through. While sailing at night, the crew saw countless fires from distant Indian camps. They called the land Tierra del Fuego (land of fire). During the passage, the captain of the San Antonio sailed his ship back toward Spain, taking with him most of the fleet's provisions. The loss of the San Antonio was a severe blow to the men on the remaining ships. They had to double their efforts to hunt game and fish to keep from starving.

During the last week of November the three ships emerged from the strait to the open sea of the Pacific. Magellan mistakenly thought the Spice Islands were a short voyage away. He had no idea of the immense size of the ocean and thought he could cross it in two to three days. The voyage took approximately four months.

Conditions aboard the ships were abominable. The crew began to starve as food stores were depleted. The water turned putrid and yellow in color. The crew survived on sawdust, leather strips from the sails, and rats. Without the benefit of vitamin C in fresh fruits and vegetables, the men also came down with scurvy.

Finally in January, 1521, the crew stopped off at an island to feast on fish, crabs, and seabird eggs, but without fresh fruit and vegetables, scurvy still plagued the crew. In March, the crew stopped in Guam and were able to supply the ships with food including fresh fruit, vegetables, and water. They sailed on to the Philippines, arriving on March 28. After befriending an island king, Magellan foolishly got involved in the natives' tribal warfare and was killed in battle on April 27, 1521.

Sebastian del Cano took over the remaining three ships and 115 survivors. Because there were not enough men to crew three ships, del Cano had the Concepcion burned. The two remaining ships sailed from the Philippines on May 1 and made it to the Moluccas (Spice Islands) in November. The crew loaded both ships with valuable spices.

In an attempt to guarantee that at least one ship would make it back to Spain, the Trinidad went east across the Pacific, while the Victoria continued west. The Trinidad did not make it back. The ship was seized by the Portuguese and most of her crew were killed. The Victoria managed to elude the Portuguese as it crossed enemy trade routes in the Indian Ocean and rounded the Cape of Good Hope. On September 6, 1522, almost three years from the day it began its historic journey, the Victoria and eighteen crewmembers (Pigafetta among them) arrived in Spain. It was the first vessel to circumnavigate the globe.

Marco Polo (Explorars)

2012-01-07T02:41:00.000-08:00

Marco Polo was born in Venice in 1254 and raised by his mother. His father, Niccolo Polo, was a successful trader who spent most of Marco's childhood traveling with Marco's uncle. The two men returned to Venice when Marco was a teenager, only to find out that his mother had died while they were gone. During their travels in China, Marco's father and uncle made an unlikely friend in Mongol ruler Kublai Khan.

Marco Polo, one of the greatest voyagers of all time (think Indiana Jones without the stuntmen), whose writings have influenced other travelers for centuries. At the time that Polo embarked on his sojourn, Western Europeans knew very little about the countries Polo visited. China in particular was a mystery because it's surrounded by treacherous mountain terrain, deserts and oceans. Before travel from Europe to China became commonplace, information and goods from faraway lands were obtained primarily from people who traveled the Silk Road. The Silk Road was a series of trade routes that allowed merchants to transport goods such as silk and precious gems from Central Asia to Europe Marco Polo's travels on the Silk Road and other ancient trade routes, which took him farther than any European before him, were chronicled in his book "The Description of the World" (also known as "The Travels of Marco Polo"). This book was Europe's first glimpse into unknown parts of the world.

Khan asked the explorers to return to China with a hundred or so missionaries and priests to teach his people about Christianity, as well as holy oil blessed by the Pope. The duo enlisted Marco in this mission in 1271 when he was 17. It was easy obtaining the holy oil, but the group had less success commissioning missionaries -- two friars were sent by the church, but they turned around and went home.

All in all, the trio spent 24 years on the road, winding through a variety of treacherous and beautiful landscapes in the Middle East, Central Asia and China that spanned more than 24,000 miles (38,624 km). The bulk of their time (17 years) was spent serving Khan's court in China.

Erik the Red (Explorars)

2012-01-07T02:33:00.000-08:00

While we most often remember the great explorers, Spanish and Portuguese both, many equally daring and bold explorers, famous and well-known, came before them. Erik the Red was one of these explorers. Long before Columbus and Magellan, and other explorers, Portuguese and Spanish, Viking explorers sea traveled. Erik the Red is an interesting historical character, bearing neither the science nor faith of later explorers, famous or not. Erik the Red was first banished from Norway for some killings, then later again from Iceland, again for killing. With that banishment, Erik and some of his followers made the 500 mile sea crossing to the west. They sailed around the southern tip of the island, finally settling in a less frozen part of Greenland.

Greenland’s Discovery and Founding

Erik the Red was not the first explorer, sea traveling and bold, to visit Greenland, but his is the most famous. In the century prior, one explorer, Gunnbjorn Ulfsson, had visited the island of Greenland, and there had even been an unsuccessful colonization attempt. Erik spent three years, from 982 to 985 exploring Greenland, settling in an area that looked to offer a climate similar to that of Iceland. Much of Greenland is frigid and arctic, the growing season short, and the climate inhospitable and challenging. When he returned to Iceland at the end of his banishment, he began to attempt to encourage others to make the journey that he as an explorer, seaworthy and brave, had. He named the inhospitable and icy island Greenland in an attempt to make it seem welcoming and prosperous. The settlers in Greenland, under the rule of Erik the Red, built two settlements in the only land of Greenland suitable for farming, and fished and hunted seal and other arctic animals in the more hospitable summers.

Erik the Red’s Legacy

While Erik the Red left a settlement in the rough and challenging land of Greenland, his son is more remembered as an explorer, famous and successful. Erik the Red’s son, Leif Eriksson, founded a colony in North America, Vinland. Erik the Red’s exploits as an adventurer and explorer, famous and interesting are recounted in “The Saga of Erik the Red”. For more information on Erik the Red and the founding of Greenland, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_the_Red. The lives and settlements of the Norwegian settlers in Greenland, each and explorer, sea and land, may be read about at

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Leaders)

2012-01-02T04:55:00.000-08:00

(January 5, 1928-April 4, 1970) was a Pakistani politician who served as President, from 1971 to 1973, and as Prime Minister, from 1973 to 1977, of Pakistan. He has the rare distinction of being a civilian Chief Martial Law Administrator.

Bhuttl was born in Larkana (in what is now Pakistan) the only son of Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto. He completed his early education in Bombay. After completing his initial education, he went to the United States in 1947 to study at the University of Southern California and later transferred to the University of California, Berkeley. He applied to Harvard and accepted but chose to stay at Berkley. While at Berkeley he was the first Asian student to be elected to the Berkeley Student Council. From Berkeley he earned a degree in political science, after which he went to Oxford and studied at Christ Church College from where he graduated with honours.

Following his time at Oxford, he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1953 (which had also been attended by allama Iqbal and Muhammed ali Jinnah). The same year, his first child was born, a daughter Benazir, who would later become prime minister herself. In 1958 he joined the cabined of Iskander Mirza. From there, he was active in the Pakistani government working at various posts.

In 1966 he resigned from the cabinet, after serving as Foreign Minister. In 1967 Bhutto formed the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to oppose Ayub Khan’s regime. He was arrested in November 1968 and detained for three months. The movement he helped unleash in West Pakistan in conjunction with agitation for greater autonomy taking place in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), forced the resignation of Ayub Khan in March 1969.

Ayub Khan handed power over to the army commander in chief, Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, who assumed the presidency and reimposed martial law. The issue of an autonomous East Pakistan continued to plague Yahya’s administration. In elections held in 1970, the pro-autonomy Awami League won by a landslide in East Pakistan, capturing enough parliamentary seats to control any government that might be formed. Bhutto’s PPP captured the majority of seats in West Pakistan. When Yahya and the PPP delayed the transfer of power to the mewly elected representatives in March 1971, public unrest erupted in East Pakistan. East Pakistani leaders demanded the establishment of an independent nation of Bangladesh, and the Pakistani army cracked down brutally on civilians as well as on armed revolutionaries in East Pakistan. When India intervened in the civil war in December, the Pakistani army was swiftly defeated, and East pakistan emerged as the state of Bangladesh. Yahya Khan resigned, and Bhutto was inaugurated as president and chief martial law administrator on December 20, 1971.

Bhutto introduced socialist economic reforms while working to prevent any further division of the country. He nationalized Pakistan’s mijor industries, life insurance companies, and private schools and colleges. Bhuto enacted tax relief for the country’s coorest agricultural workers and placed ceilings on land ownership. He countered secessionist movements in all of Pakistan’s provinces, lifted martial law in 1972, and pushed through a new constitution in 1973 that recognized Islam as the national religion. Under the parliamentary system established by the new constitution, Bhutto became prime minister.

During elections held in March 1977, nine opposition parties, united as the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), ran a popular campaign against Bhutto’s PPP. When the PPP won a decisive victory in the parliamentary round of the elections, the PNA accused Bhutto’s party of rigging the vote and withdrew in protest from upcoming provincial elections. Widespread street fighting broke out, and opposition politicians were arrested. On July 5 the military, led by General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, staged a coup. Zia relieved Bhutto of power, holding him in detention for a month.

Upon his release, Bhutto travelled the country amid adulatory crowds of PPP supporters. In September the army arrested Bhutto again on charges of authorizing the murder of a political opponent in 1974. Bhutto insisted that the allegations were false, but the high court in Lahore, packed with Zia’s supporters, convicted Bhutto and imposed the death sentence. The Supreme Court approved the judgment by a 4-3 vote, and despite international protests, Bhutto was hanged in April 1979. He is buried in his ancestral village of Larkana next to his father.

Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka (Leaders)

2012-01-02T04:48:00.000-08:00

known as Sarath Fonseka, born on December 18, 1950, is a former commander and General of the Sri Lanka Army and a former candidate for President of Sri Lanka. As Commander of the Army, he played an instrumental role in ending the 26 year Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009, defeating the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the process. He later had a public falling out with President Mahinda Rajapaksa, and unsuccessfully challenged Rajapaksa in the 2010 presidential election.

Fonseka joined the Sri Lanka Army in 1970 and saw action throughout the 26 year civil war, culminating in a term as commander from December 6, 2005 – July 15, 2009. As commander, he oversaw the the final phase of the civil war which resulted in the defeat of the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam organization. Fonseka has been described as Sri Lanka’s most successful army commander, and his run of significant military victories against the LTTE during Eelam War IV led the Indian National Security Advisor Mayankote Kelath Narayanan to describe him as the “best army commander in the world”. On April 25, 2006 Fonseka survived an assassination attempt when an LTTE suicide bomber attacked his motorcade. Following the end of the war he was appointed Chief of Defence Staff, a post from which he retired on November 16th, 2009.

Born to Peter and Piyawathie Fonseka of Ambalangoda, he had his education at Dharmasoka College, Ambalangoda (1958-1965) and Ananda College, Colombo (1966-1969). Fonseka is a sportsman who participated in swimming and water polo events, representing defense services and the country.

Sarath Fonseka Officially handed over his resignation to the President through the Secretary of Defence on 12th November 2009. He left the Office on 16th November 2009, as the President had requested him to vacate the office immediately.

At a press conference held in Colombo on 29th November 2009, Generela Sarath Fonseka formally announced his candidacy at the next Presidential election scheduled to be held on 26 January 2010.

Joseph Robinette “Joe” Biden, Jr. (Leaders)

2012-01-02T04:46:00.000-08:00

was born on November 20, 1942 , is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama. He was a United States Senator from Delaware from January 3, 1973 until his resignation on January 15, 2009, following his election to the Vice Presidency.

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. (1915–2002) and Catherine Eugenia “Jean” Finnegan (1917–2010). He was the first of four sibling in an Irish Catholic family with roots in County Londonderry. He has two brothers, James Brian Biden and Francis W. Biden, and a sister, Valerie (Biden) Owens. His great-grandfather, Edward F. Blewitt, was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate.

Biden’s father had been very well-off earlier in his life, but had suffered several business reverses by the time Biden was born, and for several years the family had to live with Biden’s maternal grandparents, the Finnegans. When the Scranton area went into economic decline during the 1950s, Biden’s father could not find enough work. In 1953, the Biden family moved to an apartment in Claymont, Delaware, where they lived for a few years before moving to a house in Wilmington, Delaware. Joe Biden Sr. then did better as a used car salesman, and the family’s circumstances were middle class.

Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont, where he was a standout halfback/wide receiver on the high school football team; he helped lead a perennially losing team to an undefeated season in his senior year. He played on the baseball team as well. During these years, he participated in an anti-segregation sit-in at a Wilmington theatre. Academically, Biden was undistinguished, but he was a natural leader among the students. He graduated in 1961.

Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark, where he was more interested in sports and socializing than in studying, although his classmates were impressed by his cramming abilities. He played halfback with the Blue Hens freshman football team, but he dropped a junior year plan to play for the varsity team as a defensive back, enabling him to spend more time with his out-of-state girlfriend. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in history and political science in 1965, ranked 506th of 688 in his class.

He went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968, where by his own description he found it to be “the biggest bore in the world” and pulled many all-nighters to get by. During his first year there, he was accused of having plagiarized 5 of 15 pages of a law review article. Biden said it was inadvertent due to his not knowing the proper rules of citation, and he was permitted to retake the course after receiving a grade of F, which was subsequently dropped from his record. He was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and lived there for ten years before moving to Delaware. He became an attorney in 1969, and was elected to a county council in 1970. Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 and became the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was re-elected to the Senate six times, was the fourth most senior senator at the time of his resignation, and is the 14th-longest serving Senator in history. Biden was a long-time member and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. His strong advocacy helped bring about U.S. military assistance and intervention during the Bosnian War. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991. He voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002, but later proposed resolutions to alter U.S. strategy there. He has also served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, and led creation of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and Violence Against Women Act. He chaired the Judiciary Committee during the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.

Biden unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008, both times dropping out early in the race. Barack Obama selected Biden to be the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Biden is the first Roman Catholic and the first Delawarean to become Vice President of the United States. As Vice President, Biden has been heavily involved in Obama’s decision-making process and has held the oversight role for infrastructure spending from the Obama stimulus package aimed at counteracting the late-2000s recession.

Negative impressions of drinking alcohol in the Biden and Finnegan families and in the neighborhood led to Joe Biden becoming a teetotaler. Biden suffered from stuttering through much of his childhood and into his twenties; he overcame it via long hours spent reciting poetry in front of a mirror.

On August 27, 1966, Biden, then a law student, married Neilia Hunter, who was from an affluent background in Skaneateles, New York and had attended Syracuse University. They had met in 1964 while on spring break in the Bahamas, and he had overcome her parents’ initial reluctance for her to be dating a Roman Catholic. They had three children, Joseph R. “Beau” Biden III (born 1969), Robert Hunter (born 1970), and Naomi Christina (born 1971).

In 1969, Biden began practicing law in Wilmington, Delaware, first as a public defender and then with his own firm, Biden and Walsh. Corporate law, however, did not appeal to him and criminal law did not pay well. He supplemented his income by managing properties. He ran as a Democrat for the New Castle County Council on a liberal platform that included support for public housing in the suburban area. He won by a solid margin in the usually Republican district, and served from 1970 to 1972 while continuing his private law practice as well.

Christopher John “Chris” Dodd (Leaders)

2012-01-02T04:44:00.000-08:00

was born on May 27, 1944 in Willimantic, Connecticut, is an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician serving as the senior U.S. Senator from Connecticut.

His parents were Grace Mary Dodd and U.S. Senator Thomas Joseph Dodd; all eight of his great-grandparents were born in Ireland. He is the fifth of six children; his eldest brother, Thomas J. Dodd Jr., is a professor emeritus of the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, and served as the U.S. ambassador to Uruguay and Costa Rica under President Bill Clinton.

Dodd is a Connecticut native and a graduate of Georgetown Preparatory School in Bethesda, Maryland, and Providence College. His father, Thomas J. Dodd, was one of Connecticut’s United States Senators from 1959-1971. Chris Dodd served in the Peace Corps for two years prior to entering law school at the University of Louisville, and during law school concurrently served in the United States Army Reserve.

Dodd returned to Connecticut, winning election in 1974 to the United States House of Representatives from Connecticut’s 2nd congressional district and was reelected in 1976 and 1978. He was elected United States Senator in the elections of 1980, and is now the longest-serving Senator in Connecticut’s history, the 9th most senior of current Senators and one of three from the 1980 freshman class who is still serving.

Dodd served as general chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1995 to 1997. He serves as Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. In 2006, Dodd decided to run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, but eventually withdrew after running behind several other competitors. In January 2010 Dodd announced that he would not run for re-election in the 2010 midterm elections.

David Alexander Paterson (Leaders)

2012-01-02T04:41:00.000-08:00

born on May 20, 1954 in Brooklyn to Basil Paterson and his wife Portia, is the 55th and current Governor of New York. He is the first governor of New York of African American heritage and also the second legally blind[2] governor of any U.S. state after Bob C. Riley, who was Acting Governor of Arkansas for eleven days in January 1975.

After graduating from Hofstra Law School, Paterson worked in the District Attorney’s office of Queens County, New York, and on the staff of Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins. In 1985, he was elected to the New York State Senate to a seat that was once held by his father, former New York Secretary of State Basil Paterson. In 2003, he rose to the position of Senate Minority Leader. Paterson was selected as running mate by then-New York Attorney General and Democratic Party nominee Eliot Spitzer in the 2006 New York gubernatorial election. Spitzer and Paterson were elected in November 2006 with 69 percent of the vote, and Paterson took office as Lieutenant Governor on January 1, 2007.

When Spitzer resigned in the wake of a prostitution scandal, Paterson was sworn in as governor of New York on March 17, 2008. As Governor of New York, Paterson has reportedly received lower approval ratings than any other New York governor has received.

At the age of three months, Paterson contracted an ear infection which spread to his optic nerve, leaving him with no sight in his left eye and severely limited vision in his right. Since New York City public schools would not guarantee him an education without placing him in special education classes, his family bought a home in the Long Island suburb of South Hempstead so that he could attend mainstream classes there. Paterson was the first disabled student in the Hempstead public schools, and graduated from Hempstead High School in 1971.

Paterson’s staff reads documents to him over voice mail.

One day after Paterson’s inauguration as the Governor of New York, both he and his wife acknowledged having had extramarital affairs, one with a state employee. Paterson’s self-admissions are in contravention to what the press has dubbed the “Bear Mountain Compact,” a practice by lawmakers that their transgressions north of the Bear Mountain Bridge will not be reported south of it.

In May 2008, Governor Paterson informed New York State agencies that they were required to recognize same-sex marriage licenses from other jurisdictions for purposes of employee benefits.

Paterson and his wife, Michelle Paige Paterson, live in New York City. They have two children.

Riley B. King (Musicians)

2012-01-02T04:33:00.000-08:00

was born on September 16, 1925 in Itta Bena, Mississippi, a small town near Indianola, Mississippi, known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter acclaimed for his expressive singing and guitar playing.

His parents were Alfred King and Nora Ella King. King grew up singing in a gospel choir. At age 12 he bought his first guitar for $15.00. In 1943 King left Indianola to work as a tractor driver.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at #3 on its list of the “100 greatest guitarists of all time”. According to Edward M. Komara, King “introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending and shimmering vibrato that would influence virtually every electric blues guitarist that followed.” King has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 1946 King followed his cousin Bukka White to Memphis, Tennessee. White took him in for the next ten months. However, King shortly returned to Mississippi, where he decided to prepare himself better for the next visit, and returned to Memphis two years later. Initially he worked at the local R&B radio station WDIA as a singer and disc jockey, where he gained the nickname “Beale Street Blues Boy”, later shortened to “B.B.” It was there that he first met T-Bone Walker. “Once I’d heard him for the first time, I knew I’d have to have [an electric guitar] myself. ‘Had’ to have one, short of stealing!”, he said.

In 1948 when he performed on Sonny Boy Williamson’s radio program on KWEM in West Memphis, Arkansas he began to develop a local audience for his sound. King’s appearances led to steady engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis and later to a ten-minute spot on the legendary Memphis radio station WDIA. “King’s Spot,” became so popular, it was expanded and became the “Sepia Swing Club.”

In 1949, King began recording songs under contract with Los Angeles-based RPM Records. Many of King’s early recordings were produced by Sam Phillips, who later founded Sun Records. Before his RPM contract, King had debuted on Bullet Records by issuing the single “Miss Martha King” (1949), which did not chart well.

King has been married twice, to Martha Lee Denton, 1946 to 1952, and to Sue Carol Hall, 1958 to 1966. Both marriages ended because of the heavy demands made on the marriage by King’s 250 performances a year. It is reported that he has fathered 15 children. He has lived with Type II diabetes for over twenty years and is a high-profile spokesman in the fight against the disease, appearing in advertisements for diabetes-management products.

King is an FAA licensed Private Pilot and learned to fly in 1963 at Chicago Hammond Airport in Lansing, IL. He frequently flew to gigs, but under the advisement of his insurance company and manager in 1995, King was asked to only fly with another licensed pilot and as a result King stopped flying around age 70.

His favorite singer is Frank Sinatra. In his autobiography King speaks about how he was, and is, a “Sinatra nut” and how he went to bed every night listening to Sinatra’s classic album In the Wee Small Hours. King has credited Sinatra for opening doors to black entertainers who were not given the chance to play in “white dominated” venues; Sinatra got B.B. King into the main clubs in Las Vegas during the 1960s.

Amber Patrice Riley (Musicians)

2012-01-02T04:31:00.000-08:00

was born on February 13, 1986 in Los Angeles, California, U.S., is an American actress and singer best known for her role on the series Glee as Mercedes Jones.

Riley auditioned for American Idol but was turned down by the producers. Amber graduated from La Mirada High School, La Mirada, California in 2004. In 2006, Riley auditioned for the part of Effie in Dreamgirls, yet was refused because of her age. Riley appeared at the 2010 MTV VMAs on September 12, 2010.

Riley currently plays the role of Mercedes on the hit ‘dramedy’ Glee. She has sung numerous solos, including “Bust Your Windows”, “Hate on Me”, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”, “Beautiful”,”Bridge over Troubled Water” and “I Look to You”. Her character gets through her school days with her ‘diva-style’ and stylish clothes. In 2011, Riley received an NAACP Image Award nomination for her portrayal of Mercedes on Glee. She has won a Screen Actors Guild Award for her acting on Glee along with the show’s ensemble, and has also been nominated for a Teen Choice Award for her acting on the show. Amber’s mother, Tina, was a member of the choir whom Mercedes dances with in the song “Like a Prayer” during the 15th episode of the first season.

Alice Malsenior Walker (Authors)

2012-01-02T04:19:00.000-08:00

was born on February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, USA, is an African American author and poet. She has written at length on issues of race and gender, and is most famous for the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Walker was youngest of eight children, to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant. Her father, who was, in her words, “wonderful at math but a terrible farmer,” earned only $300 a year from sharecropping and dairy farming, while her mother supplemented the family income by working as a maid. Her mother worked 11 hours a day for USD $17 a week to help pay for Alice to attend college.

Living under Jim Crow Laws, Walker’s mother had struggles with landlords who expected the children of black sharecroppers to work the fields at a young age. A white plantation owner once asserted to her that blacks had “no need for education.” Mrs. Walker’s response to him was ‘You might have some black children somewhere, but they don’t live in this house. Don’t you ever come around here again talking about how my children don’t need to learn how to read and write.” When she was four years old, Alice was enrolled in the first grade, a year ahead of schedule.

Growing up with an oral tradition, listening to stories from her grandfather, Walker was writing—very privately—since she was eight years old. “With my family, I had to hide things,” she said. “And I had to keep a lot in my mind.”

In 1952, Walker was accidentally wounded in the right eye by a shot from a BB gun fired by one of her brothers. Because the family had no access to a car, the Walkers were unable to take their daughter to a hospital for immediate treatment, and when they finally brought her to a physician a week later, she was permanently blind in that eye. A disfiguring layer of scar tissue formed over it, rendering the previously outgoing child self-conscious and painfully shy.

Stared at and sometimes taunted, she felt like an outcast and turned for solace to reading and to writing poetry. Although when she was 14, the scar tissue was removed—and she subsequently became valedictorian and was voted most-popular girl, as well as queen of her senior class, she realized that her traumatic injury had some value: it allowed her to begin “really to see people and things, really to notice relationships and to learn to be patient enough to care about how they turned out,” as she has said.

Alice Walker met Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a student at Spelman College in Atlanta in the early 1960s. Walker credits King for her decision to return to the American South as an activist for the Civil Rights Movement. She attended the famous 1963 March on Washington. As a young adult she volunteered her time registering voters in Georgia and Mississippi.

After high school, Walker went to Spelman College in Atlanta on a full scholarship in 1961 and later transferred to Sarah Lawrence College near New York City, graduating in 1965. Walker became interested in the U.S. civil rights movement in part due to the influence of activist Howard Zinn, who was one of her professors at Spelman College. Continuing the activism that she participated in during her college years, Walker returned to the South where she became involved with voter registration drives, campaigns for welfare rights, and children’s programs in Mississippi.

In 1965, Walker met and later married Melvyn Roseman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were married on March 17, 1967 in New York City. Later that year the couple relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, becoming “the first legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi”. This brought them a steady stream of harassment and even murderous threats from the Ku Klux Klan. The couple had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1969, whom she described in 2008 as “a living, breathing, mixed-race embodiment of the new America that they were trying to forge”.

Walker and her husband divorced amicably in 1976. Walker would later become estranged from her daughter, who felt herself to be more of “a political symbol… than a cherished daughter”. Rebecca would later publish a memoir entitled Black White and Jewish, chronicling the effects of her parents’ relationship on her childhood.

In the mid-1990s, Walker was involved in a romance with singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman.

Walker’s first book of poetry was written while she was still a senior at Sarah Lawrence, and she took a brief sabbatical from writing when she was in Mississippi working in the civil rights movement. Walker resumed her writing career when she joined Ms. magazine as an editor before moving to northern California in the late 1970s. An article she published in 1975 was largely responsible for the renewal of interest in the work of Zora Neale Hurston, who was a large source of inspiration for Walker’s writing and subject matter. In 1973, Walker and fellow Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered Hurston’s unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Both women paid for a modest headstone for the gravesite.

In January 2009, she was one of over 50 signers of a letter protesting the Toronto Film Festival’s “City to City” spotlight on Israeli filmmakers, condemning Israel as an “apartheid regime.”

Dr. Avtar Singh Paintal (Doctors)

2012-01-02T04:16:00.000-08:00

When people, whether young or old, climb a mountain, they are easily tired. If they still over exert themselves, breathlessness overcomes them and they must rest. It has been found that, if people ignore these warnings, they sometimes die of congestion of the lungs, called pulmonary congestion.

What is it that warns an overenthusiastic climber? It is the nerve terminals in the lungs called “juxtapulmonary capillary receptors” or simply “J-receptors”.

Likewise, what is it that warns you that your stomach is full and cannot take any more food or water? It is, again the nerve terminals in the stomach, “gastrointestinal stretch receptors.”

Do you know who discovered these receptors in the human body? He is Dr. Avtar Singh Paintal, now Director of the Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute in Delhi. In 1981 he became the first Indian medical scientist to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society.

Paintal was born at Mogok, Burma, a place renowned in the old days for its rubies. His father was a doctor. Young Paintal had, therefore, the opportunity of seeing his father perform operations. He thus became interested in biology. Popular science books further stimulated hid interest in science. In fact, he used to plaster his parents for money to buy books.

Eventually, he secured admission to Lucknow Medical Collage and had a brilliant academic career. He, however, says now, “I wasted a lot of time trying to come first, while I should have been reading magazines like Scientific American which contain solid science.”

In 1950, on a Rockefeller fellowship, he went to Edinburgh in Britain to do his Ph.D. under Professor D. Whitteridge, an eminent medical scientist.

At Edinburgh Dr. Paintal conducted a marvelous experiment which surprised even Professor Whitteridge. He discovered a pair of “volume receptors” in the heart, whereas his guide had expected them in the lungs. These receptors control the volume of fluid in the body.

After taking his Ph.D. he retuned to India and in 1954 joined the Patel Chest Institute as Assistant Director, where he has been since. Among other things, he discovered the “J-receptors” in 1955. Dr. Paintal seems to enjoy every moment of research in his laboratory. “A person who is keen to take science should have a strong character and should avoid short-cuts in general,” is his advice to young people.

What is the importance of Dr. Paintal’s discoveries? Understanding the functioning of the “J-receptors” would help relieve persons suffering from breathlessness. At present efforts are in progress to discover a drug which could block the receptors and thus give relief to patients. The knowledge of the functioning of the gastro-intestine stretch receptors would be valuable in the study of gastric ulcers.

Dr. Paintal has also introduced new techniques in medical research which have led to the discovery of other receptors in the lungs, heart and intestines. He is trying to develop a screening test to find out who are more susceptible to sickness at high altitudes.

Victoria Beckham (Models)

2011-12-31T03:50:00.000-08:00

After forming in 1993, each of the five members of the Spice Girls developed her own persona, with Victoria Beckham as "Posh Spice." They released their debut album, Spice, in 1996, and it sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. Beckham later explored her love of fashion, developing a line of jeans called VB Rocks in 2004. In 2007, Beckham went on a reunion tour with the Spice Girls.

Singer, fashion designer, author, model. Born Victoria Adams on April 17, 1974, in Hertfordshire, England. Since achieving success as a pop singer in the 1990s, Victoria Beckham has become one of the most photographed women in the world. Tabloids seem to follow nearly every move that she and her husband, soccer star David Beckham make. Capitalizing on her broad exposure, Victoria Beckham has built her own brand, consisting of clothing, perfume, and sunglasses.

Raised in an affluent family, Beckham started studying ballet at a young age. She pursued her interest in dance at the Laine Arts Theatre College in Surrey when she was 17. After three years there, Beckham moved to London to try to make it as a dancer. Her lucky break came when she answered an ad seeking energetic and hard-working young women in 1993. Out of the 400 women who applied, Beckham was chosen to part of a new all-female pop music group.

Spice Girls

Created by manager Chris Herbert, the band that would become known as the Spice Girls started rehearsing together. The final line-up came together by mid-1993 and consisted of Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm, Geri Halliwell, Emma Bunton, and Beckham. The group wanted more creative control and soon broke off with Herbert. They later signed with manager Brian Fuller and got a contract with Virgin Records.

Each of the five members of the Spice Girls developed their own persona: Melanie Brown was known as "Scary Spice"; Melanie Chisholm was "Sporty Spice"; Geri Halliwell was "Ginger Spice"; Emma Bunton was "Baby Spice"; and Beckham was "Posh Spice." They released their debut album, Spice, in 1996 and reached the top of American charts with the catchy dance-pop song "Wannabe" the following year. The follow-up single, "Say You'll Be There," climbed as high as number three on the Billboard 200 chart. The album eventually sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

The group's "girl power" message attracted a substantial audience, especially young teenage girls. In 1997, they released the second album titled Spiceworld and starred in a film of the same name early the following year. While they scored a hit with the song "2 Become 1," Spice Girls failed to duplicate the success of their debut recording. The film featured cameos by such performers as Elvis Costello, Bob Geldof, and Elton John and had some success at the box office, netting close to $30 million.

Marriage to David Beckham

Behind the scenes, Beckham's personal life was also thriving. She met soccer player David Beckham at a game in 1997, and the two soon became one of Britain's most popular couples, known in the tabloid as "Posh" and "Becks." They got engaged in 1998 and welcomed their first child together, son Brooklyn, in March 1999. That summer, the couple wed in a lavish ceremony at a castle in Ireland. Beckham invited television audiences inside her life with the reality special Victoria's Secrets, which aired on British television in 2000. She has been featured in several other reality programs since then.

Also in 2000, the Spice Girls released the album Forever, which was recorded without Halliwell who had left the group during an earlier tour. Beckham soon went solo, releasing a self-titled album in 2001. She also wrote her autobiography, Learning to Fly (2001), which became a best seller in Britain. Beckham gave birth to another son, Romeo, the following year.

All of Beckham's success has attracted its share of unwanted attention. In 2002, she and her family also made headlines when the authorities uncovered a plot to kidnap Beckham and hold her for ransom. The following year Beckham moved to Madrid, Spain. After 14 years with the Manchester United team, her husband had signed a lucrative deal to play for the Real Madrid team.

Stepping away from the music scene, Beckham explored her love of fashion. She developed a line of jeans called VB Rocks for the Rock & Republic brand in 2004. In 2006, Beckham shared her fashion wisdom in the book That Extra Half an Inch: Hair, Heels and Everything in Between. One year later, Beckham launched her own line of sunglasses called dVb Eyewear and a line of jeans soon followed.

That same year, Beckham and her family (which now included third son Cruz born in 2005) moved to Los Angeles, California. David Beckham joined the American soccer team the LA Galaxy, and the arrival of the Beckhams created quite a media frenzy. They were soon seen with some of the city's top celebrities, including Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. She also befriended model and television personality Heidi Klum who also lived in their neighborhood. "Under all that glam and glitz is a really lovely person who is genuine, funny, sexy, and such a great mother," Klum said in an interview with Harper's Bazaar.

Also in 2007, Beckham returned to the pop music world for a reunion tour with the Spice Girls. This time around, the five singers brought their seven children on the road. "We're very strict moms, and that's what keeps the children happy. They have a routine even if they're with us on tour. Children thrive on routines," Beckham explained to Entertainment Weekly.

Her return to music was short-lived, despite having numerous sold-out shows. Beckham has said several times that her main focus is fashion. She expanded her clothing line in 2008, introducing a new line of dresses. "Everything that I design I would wear myself," Beckham once said. Her business empire also includes a line of fragrances.

In 2009, Beckham became the model for the Emporio Armani underwear line for women. Her husband had previously been featured in ads for their men's line. Beckham explained that she took the job because "when I'm 50, I can look back and say, 'Hey, Mommy didn't look too bad after having three kids,' " Beckham told Time magazine.

Beckham maintains a light-hearted attitude about being the target of frequent tabloid news stories. "I've had so many ludicrous things written about me and my family and my friends that it's almost like a joke," she told Allure magazine. For right now, Beckham is focused on her work as a designer. "I'm so grateful to the fashion industry for accepting me and giving me a chance."

Carol Alt (Models)

2011-12-31T03:44:00.000-08:00

Model Carol Alt was born in College Point, New York on December 1, 1960. A photographer discovered her while she was waitressing at a local steak house. She dropped out of college and by 1980 appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Her career laid the foundation for the “supermodel” trend that exists today. She had an Italian film career and in the 2000s wrote books about the raw food movement.

Actress. Born Carol Alt on December 1, 1960, in College Point, New York. Alt's father, Anthony, was a New York City fire chief. Her mother, Muriel, was an airline employee and former model. Despite her precocious good looks and early exposure to modeling, Alt says, "I was totally not interested in fashion as a child. I was a tomboy. I was more interested in passing the football and getting on the hockey team."

After graduating from high school, Alt enrolled at Hofstra University in 1979 on an Army ROTC scholarship. In addition to attending classes and participating in military drills, Alt waited tables at a local steak house. One day a photographer walked into the restaurant and told her she should be a model. He took Alt to the Elite Modeling Agency, where fashion mogul John Casablancas took one look at the leggy beauty and offered her a contract on the spot. Shortly after their first meeting, Alt dropped out of college to pursue a modeling career full time. Alt's decision to quit college infuriated her parents. "The one tip I gave her was, don't do it," her mother recalls.

Success As a Model

Alt enjoyed immediate success as a model. In 1980, only a few months after leaving Hofstra, she appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. Two years later, Alt landed on the cover of the 1982 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, one of the most coveted covers in all of fashion. Propelled by this early success, Alt went on to become one of the most ubiquitous faces of the 1980s. She graced the covers of more than 700 magazines including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle and Playboy. Life magazine called Alt "the next million dollar face" and Playboy proclaimed her "the most beautiful woman in the world."

In addition to her photo shoots, Alt worked as a runway model for Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. Her long list of lucrative advertising campaigns included Lancôme, Cover Girl, Pepsi and General Motors. Expanding the traditional boundaries of the modeling industry, in the early 1980s Alt posed for a series of five posters. When Elite rejected the project, Alt self-produced the posters and they became huge bestsellers, sparking a new trend in the modeling business. "From then on it's been, if you're a supermodel you have a poster," Alt says. Through her omnipresence at newsstands and her forays into posters and calendars, Alt charted a course for a new kind of model, the supermodel. John Casablancas has called Alt "the model that started the supermodel trend."

Acting Career

Despite her enormous success as a model, Alt decided to switch the direction of her career in 1986 and try her hand at acting. She made her film debut that same year in the Italian film Via Montenapoleone. Alt found a niche market in Italy and acted in dozens of Italian films and TV shows, using voice dubbing until she learned to speak Italian fluently. Alt has also turned in several notable performances in American films and TV shows. In 1991, she starred in the TV movie Vendetta: Secrets of a Mafia Bride and in 1997, she played opposite Howard Stern in Private Parts. Alt flashed her comic side with guest appearances on the animated series Family Guy and King of the Hill, and she also starred in the 1999 drama series Amazon. In 2008, Alt appeared on Donald Trump's reality TV competition Celebrity Apprentice. She competed for her charity, the Tony Alt Memorial Foundation, and came in third.

Writing Career

In the early 2000s, Carol Alt underwent another career makeover as a raw foods specialist and author. In 2004, she published her first book Eating in the Raw: A Beginner's Guide to Getting Slimmer, Feeling Healthier, and Looking Younger the Raw-Food Way. She followed that with the 2007 release of The Raw 50: 10 Amazing Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, Snacks, and Drinks for Your Raw Food Lifestyle. Both books landed on bestseller lists. Inspired by the success of her raw foods books, Alt expanded into fiction, releasing her debut novel, This Year's Model, in 2008. The following year, she published a sequel entitled Model, Incorporated.

Carol Alt married New York Rangers hockey star Ron Greschner in 1984. Always an avid hockey fan, Alt became a staple figure at Rangers' home games—the 5-foot 10-inch supermodel cheering with abandon in the front row of Madison Square Garden. Alt and Greschner split ways in 1996 and Alt soon began dating another NHL player, Ottawa Senators forward Alexei Yashin. Nevertheless, Alt says that her habit of dating NHL stars is merely coincidence. "It's not like I go for hockey players," she maintains.

Despite being one of the most successful supermodels of all time, Alt claims, "I never thought I was the most beautiful model out there or the most sexy woman." Instead, Alt chalks up her success to hard work and creativity. "My career was what it was," she says, "because I was creative and eccentric and a maverick in a time when people weren't. Everything I do, I'm trying to communicate with the world around me."

Steve McCurry (Photographers)

2011-12-31T03:24:00.000-08:00

Most people probably don’t know his name, but almost everyone has seen his images. Steve McCurry is probably the most famous for his image of Sharbat Gula, the Afghani refugee girl with the striking eyes. It has been said that this image is the most recognizable photograph in the world. That is saying a lot. While Steve McCurry is easily one of the best photographers and image creators in the world, he is not a household name. I’m sure he doesn’t care.

His color photography has made him a name and won him many accolades throughout his illustrious career. He has had images featured on magazine covers, newspapers, and almost every other medium possible. None of that mattered to Steve. He simply kept shooting.

Coming a long way from his days at Penn State as a cinematography and film-making major, he moved into the realm of still pictures for the college paper and that’s when the shutter bug bit. He honed his skill, and went where many would not dare. The famous image of the Afghani girl was taken when he disguised himself and snuck past the Pakistani border guards and entered Afghanistan just prior to the Russians invading. He photographed as much as he could and then had to smuggle the film out sewn into his clothing.

What makes Steve McCurry’s images so striking is not what he went through to get them, but his ability to capture the ‘soul’ and ‘essence’ of his subjects. Far from portrait-style photography in a studio setting, his photo-journalistic style, composition, color, and ability to snap the shutter at just the right time is what sets his images apart from all the rest.

Even in the digital age, McCurry preferred to shoot film for transparencies (slides). Now that the last of his preferred medium has all but vanished, he captures images digitally with a Nikon. In an interview with Hasselblad, he admitted that he preferred Nikon D3s, but has started to use a Hasselblad HDII-39. With that combination of tools, there is literally nothing McCurry can’t do.

While gear doesn’t make the image, having good tools can certainly help. The key to McCurry’s success as an image creator is volume. Over his photographic career, he has accumulated 800,000 slides. The old adage of “Practice makes perfect” would seem to hold true when it comes to McCurry’s images.

The ability to capture the essence of a person amidst the conflicts of war has set McCurry apart from almost everyone else in the industry. He simply keeps shooting until they forget he is there and a camera is present and eventually, their essence comes out and he captures it. By trying to find and capture the genuine and pure essence of people, McCurry has provided the world with some true works of art.

Some would say that he is good at finding the right people at the right time. They would say he just gets lucky with his timing. If that is the case, then he is one of the luckiest photographers ever. You can’t force people to be ‘real’, you have to wait…patiently, and let yourself disappear into the background until they relax and forget you are there.

It might be impossible to exactly duplicate or replicate McCurry’s images, but he has many lessons to teach every photographer. Even if you can’t find the time or money to attend one of his weekend workshops in New York, everyone can learn by looking at his work. Take the time to analyze his images and then compare them to your own. Find the similarities, the differences, and the things you could have done to improve them. Work on your technical skills so they become second nature, then, when you’re in the field, you can be creative and let yourself ‘disappear’. Who knows, maybe the lessons you learn from McCurry will pay off and we’ll all be ogling your images in the future.

If there is one lesson to learn from McCurry’s story, it is this: Shoot a lot. Remember…don’t take pictures…capture images.

Nick Ut (Photographers)

2011-12-31T03:18:00.000-08:00

has had a long and incredible career in photography. He has won a Pulitzer Prize for his work as well as being credited with helping to end America’s police action in Vietnam. If anyone has ever had any doubts about the power of an image, that should change their minds. The image of a naked young girl running down the road while billows of black smoke burned her village in the background launched Nick Ut into the halls of legend. The girl, Kim Phuc , was fleeing her village after it was hit with napalm on June 8, 1972.

Nick was working as a photographer for Associated Press at the time and heard there was an air-strike on a nearby village. He left to see if he could get some good images. While on the road headed there, he encountered people, many children, running away from the deadly fire that had rained from the sky. Then he encountered Kim Phuc, age 9.

He captured the horror of war and the collateral damage that is often considered in terms of math and percentages as acceptable. His image of that day and that little girl hastened the American withdrawal from Vietnam due to its effect on the people of America and the resulting pressure they placed on the political machine at that time. The photography of the time was different from what Ut captured. It was more sterile and less emotionally affective.

There is more to Nick Ut than a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph. Exactly 35 years to the day, Nick Ut captured another image that skyrocketed around the world. This time it was the distress of Paris Hilton as she was taken in a police car to serve her time in jail for a traffic violation. June 8, 2007, and the image Nick captured of Paris that day is a far cry from the war torn villages of South-East Asia, but the theme of females in distress have a commonality that cannot be denied.

While there were hundreds of paparazzi outside Hilton’s home eagerly waiting for her to emerge so they could snap away, Nick was the one who took the shot seen around the world. Surely, he did not plan the events that occurred on either day, nor was it in his designs to capture another emotional image 35 years to the day of his famous image of Kim Phuc. Nick Ut is a photojournalist. He takes pictures.

Obviously, he does more than simply ‘take pictures’. He places himself in situations that most of us do not have the ability (or inclination) to do so for ourselves. He tells stories, affects emotions, feeds our hunger for connection with the outside world, imparts a sense of ‘raw-ness’ to the events that unfold, and helps communicate ideals in a way that only images can do.

If you take the time to look at photographs before Nick’s famous shot in 1972, you will see a different style in the majority. You will see a clean, polished, distant, and sanitized version of the events that took place. After Ut’s image in ’72, the difference is dramatic. People wanted to see the real side of war, of unrest, of famous tragedy. The photographers realized that they could influence the world with raw images of the ugly side of war.

The influence of this type of photographic style is hard to minimize. The desire for images of celebrities and political figures without make-up, in embarrassing situations, and down to earth, everyday life has become a trademark for the paparazzi of our time.

While some might not lay the credit for this at Nick Ut’s feet, it would seem like an amazing coincidence that things changed at about the same time as his first image, back in 1972. Almost as amazing as capturing his second world renowned image exactly 35 years later in 2007.

While many photographers look for posed shots, reflected light, studio techniques, and post processing magic, there is something to be said for capturing the candid essence of a moment, a movement, and an intensely personal raw second to reveal the reality of life.

Robert Capa (Photographers)

2011-12-31T03:02:00.000-08:00

The wartime photojournalist, Robert Capa, is famed for his black and white images of war. One of his most famous images was the Falling Soldier, taken as a man fell in death after being shot in Spain in 1936. The image’s proper and full name is, “Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936.”

A long title, but the image has been seen by millions over the years. Capa was noted for being somewhat reckless in his attempt to get good wartime images. As one of the founders of Magnum Photos, he is quoted as saying, “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” An adage he held to until his last days. He died in 1954 in Indochina when he stepped on a landmine in an attempt to capture the action of a raging battle in the French Colonial war that was taking place at the time.

The Hungarian-Jew was born Andrè Friedmann in 1913 and always looked for action and conflict even in his younger years. As a teenager, he became entangled with revolutionaries and became embroiled in the world’s longstanding fight of anti-Semitism. When he moved to Berlin in 1931 at age 18, he became involved in photojournalism. He got up close and personal. He showed everything as it was, imperfections and all.

During the Russian Revolution, he was assigned to photograph the legendary Trotsky in Copenhagen as he spoke about the meaning of the revolution. He got his camera within a couple of feet of Trotsky and captured intimate images. His fearlessness in getting into such a close proximity of Trotsky earned him a moniker that later became his name, Capa, Hungarian for “shark”.

As anti-Jewish sentiment built in Germany in the 30’s, Capa moved to Paris. In a sheer gutsy move to sell his images for more money, he and his lover, Gerda Taro, invented the persona of an American born rich and famous photographer, Robert Capa.

The gimmick worked, and his images sold like hot cakes. Still the revolutionary at heart, Capa and Taro went to Spain to combat totalitarian regimes by shooting film instead of bullets. Capa helped found the photography co-operative Magnum Photo, named after a champagne bottle. As he continued in his pursuit to get closer to the action, he began to exhibit the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder and suffered greatly to alcoholism.

After a near death experience in Tel Aviv in 1948, he decided to leave the Korean War for other photojournalists. Then, when working for Life magazine, he decided to go to Vietnam in order to get back into the fray and document the story that was taking place there. It was in 1954 in Thai Binh, Vietnam Capa got too close for the last time and a land mine took his life and his talent from the world.

Such photographers never truly die. They live on in their work, in the images they capture. Photography is more than taking pictures, not only does it capture the essence of a moment, but it often captures the ‘soul’ of the person capturing the images. You can get to know a bit about the photographer based upon the style, composition, and general feel of the photos. Robert Capa has not been with us since 1954, but he lives still in the photos he has given the world. We can see his spirit of adventure, his willingness to push the edge, his fearlessness, his idealism, and his personality in the photos we have. Together, they tell a story of the events of this world and they help us get to know a man who was gone before his time.

As is often the case with photography, it is more than snapping a shutter; it is about capturing a story. If we take a lesson from Frank Capa, we should learn that not only can we capture the soul and essence of the subject, but we also put a tiny piece of our own essence into the image. We can immortalize ourselves from behind the lens; what a legacy we can all have.

Buzz Aldrin (Astronauts)

2011-12-31T02:46:00.000-08:00

was born as Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr. on January 20, 1930 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, U.S., is an American mechanical engineer, retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history. On July 20, 1969, he was the second human being to set foot on the Moon, following mission commander Neil Armstrong.

Aldrin was born to Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Sr., a career military man, and his wife Marion Moon. He is of Scottish, Swedish, and German ancestry. After graduating from Montclair High School in 1946, Aldrin turned down a full scholarship offer from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The nickname “Buzz” originated in childhood: the younger of his two elder sisters mispronounced “brother” as “buzzer”, and this was shortened to Buzz. Aldrin made it his legal first name in 1979.

Aldrin graduated third in his class at West Point in 1951 with a B.S. in mechanical engineering. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and served as a jet fighter pilot during the Korean War.

After the war, Aldrin was assigned as an aerial gunnery instructor at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and next was an aide to the dean of faculty at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Aldrin was selected as part of the third group of NASA astronauts in October 1963. Test pilot experience was no longer a requirement, so this was the first selection that he was eligible for. After the deaths of the original Gemini 9 prime crew, Elliot See and Charles Bassett, Aldrin was promoted with Jim Lovell to back-up crew for the mission.

On July 20, 1969, he was the second astronaut to walk on the moon and the first to have also spacewalked, keeping his record total EVA time until that was surpassed on Apollo 14. There has been much speculation about Aldrin’s desire at the time to be the first astronaut to walk on the moon. According to different NASA accounts, he had originally been proposed as the first to step onto the Moon’s surface, but due to the physical positioning of the astronauts inside the compact Lunar Landing Module, it was easier for the commander, Neil Armstrong, to be the first to exit the spacecraft. There was also a desire on NASA’s part for the first person to step onto the Moon’s surface be a civilian, which Armstrong was.

Aldrin has been married three times: to Joan Archer, with whom he had three children, James, Janice, and Andrew, to Beverly Zile, and to his current wife, Lois Driggs Cannon, whom he married on Valentine’s Day, 1988.

His battles against depression and alcoholism have been documented, most recently in Magnificent Desolation. Aldrin is an active supporter of the Republican Party, headlining fundraisers for GOP members of Congress. In 2007, Aldrin confirmed to Time magazine that he had recently had a face-lift; he joked that the G-forces he was exposed to in space “caused a sagging jowl that needed some attention.”

Jabir Ibn Haiyan (Scientists)

2011-12-31T02:44:00.000-08:00

the chemist Geber of the Middle Ages, is generally known as the father of chemistry. Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan, sometimes called al-Harrani and al-Sufi, was the son of the druggist (Attar). The precise date of his birth is the subject of some discussion, but it is established that he practiced medicine and alchemy in Kufa around 776 C.E. He is reported to have studied under Imam Ja’far Sadiq and the Ummayed prince Khalid Ibn Yazid. In his early days, he practiced medicine and was under the patronage of the Barmaki Vizir during the Abbssid Caliphate of Haroon al-Rashid. He shared some of the effects of the downfall of the Barmakis and was placed under house arrest in Kufa, where he died in 803 C.E.

Jabir’s major contribution was in the field of chemistry. He introduced experimental investigation into alchemy, which rapidly changed its character into modern chemistry. On the ruins of his well-known laboratory remained after centuries, but his fame rests on over 100 monumental treatises, of which 22 relate to chemistry and alchemy. His contribution of fundamental importance to chemistry includes perfection of scientific techniques such as crystallization, distillation, calcinations, sublimation and evaporation and development of several instruments for the same. The fact of early development of chemistry as a distinct branch of science by the Arabs, instead of the earlier vague ideas, is well-established and the very name chemistry is derived from the Arabic word al-Kimya, which was studied and developed extensively by the Muslim scientists.

Perhaps Jabir’s major practical achievement was the discovery of mineral and others acids, which he prepared for the first time in his alembic (Anbique). Apart from several contributions of basic nature to alchemy, involving largely the preparation of new compounds and development of chemical methods, he also developed a number of applied chemical processes, thus becoming a pioneer in the field of applied science. His achievements in this field include preparation of various metals, development of steel, dyeing of cloth and tanning of leather, varnishing of water-proof cloth, use of manganese dioxide in glass-making, prevention of rusting, lettering in gold, identification of paints, greases, etc. During the course of these practical endeavors, he also developed aqua regia to dissolve gold. The alembic is his great invention, which made easy and systematic the process of distillation. Jabir laid great stress on experimentation and accuracy in his work.

Based on their properties, he has described three distinct types of substances. First, spirits i.e. those which vaporize on heating, like camphor, arsenic and ammonium chloride; secondly, metals, for example, gold, silver, lead, copper, iron, and thirdly, the category of compounds which can be converted into powders. He thus paved the way for such later classification as metals, non-metals and volatile substances.

Abul Wafa Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Yahya Ibn Ismail al-Buzjani (Scientists)

2011-12-31T02:40:00.000-08:00

was born in Buzjan, Nishapur in 940 C.E. He flourished as a great mathematician and astronomer at Baghdad and died in 997/998 C.E. He learnt mathematics in Baghdad. In 959 C.E. he migrated to Iraq and lived there till his death.

Abul Wafa’s main contribution lies in several branches of mathematics, especially geometry and trigonometry. In geometry his contribution comprises solution of geometrical problems with opening of the compass; construction of a square equivalent to other squares; regular polyhedra; construction of regular hectagon taking for its side half the side of the equilateral triangle inscribed in the same circle; constructions of parabola by points and geometrical solution of the equations:

x4 = a and x4 + ax3 = b

Abul Wafa’s contribution to the development of trigonometry was extensive. He was the first to show the generality of the sine theorem relative to spherical triangles. He developed a new method of constructing sine tables, the value of sin 30′ being correct to the eighth decimal place. He also developed relations for sine (a+b) and the formula:

2 sin2 (a/2) = 1 – cos a , and

sin a = 2 sin (a/2) cos (a/2)

In addition, he made a special study of the tangent and calculated a table of tangents. He introduced the secant and cosecant for the first time, knew the relations between the trigonometric lines, which are now used to define them, and undertook extensive studies on conics.

Apart from being a mathematician, Abul Wafa also contributed to astronomy. In this field he discussed different movernents of the moon, and discovered ‘variation’. He was also one of the last Arabic translators and commentators of Greek works.

He wrote a large number of books on mathematics and other subjects, most of which have been lost or exist in modified forms. His contribution includes Kitab ‘Ilm al-Hisab, a practical book of arithmetic, al-Kitab al-Kamil (the Complete Book), Kitab al-Handsa (Applied Geometry). Apart from this, he wrote rich commentaries on Euclid, Diophantos and al-Khawarizmi, but all of these have been lost. His books now extant include Kitab ‘Ilm al-Hisab, Kitab al- Handsa and Kitab al-Kamil.

His astronomical knowledge on the movements of the moon has been criticized in that, in the case of ‘variation’ the third inequality of the moon as he discussed was the second part of the ‘evection’. But, according to Sedat, what he discovered was the same that was discovered by Tycho Brache six centuries later. Nonetheless, his contribution to trigonometry was extremely significant in that he developed the knowledge on the tangent and introduced the secant and cosecant for the first time; in fact a sizeable part of today’s trigonometry can be traced back to him.

Ibn Al-Baitar (Scientists)

2011-12-31T02:36:00.000-08:00

full name (Abu Muhammad Abdallah Ibn Ahmad Ibn al-Baitar Dhiya al-Din al-Malaqi) was one of the greatest scientists of Muslim Spain and was the greatest botanist and pharmacist of the Middle Ages. He was born in the Spanish city of Malaqa (Malaga) towards the end of the 12th century. He learned botany from Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, a learned botanist, with whom he started collecting plants in and around Spain. In 1219 he left Spain on a plant-collecting expedition and travelled along the northern coast of Africa as far as Asia Minor. The exact modes of his travel (whether by land or sea) are not known, but the major stations he visited include Bugia, Qastantunia (Constantinople), Tunis, Tripoli, Barqa and Adalia. After 1224 he entered the service of al-Kamil, the Egyptian Governor, and was appointed chief herbalist. In 1227 al-Kamil extended his domination to Damascus, and Ibn al-Baitar accompanied him there which provided him an opportunity to collect plants in Syria His researches on plants extended over a vast area: including Arabia and Palestine, which he either visited or managed to collect plants from stations located there. He died in Damascus in 1248.

Ibn Baitar’s major contribution, Kitab al-Jami fi al-Adwiya al- Mufrada, is one of the greatest botanical compilations dealing with medicinal plants in Arabic. It enjoyed a high status among botanists up to the 16th century and is a systematic work that embodies earlier works, with due criticism, and adds a great part of original contribution. The encyclopedia comprises some 1,400 different items, largely medicinal plants and vegetables, of which about 200 plants were not known earlier. The book refers to the work of some 150 authors mostly Arabic, and it also quotes about 20 early Greek scientists. It was translated into Latin and published in 1758.

His second monumental treatise Kitab al-Mlughni fi al-Adwiya al-Mufrada is an encyclopedia of medicine. The drugs are listed in accordance with their therapeutical value. Thus, its 20 different chapters deal with the plants bearing significance to diseases of head, ear, eye, etc. On surgical issues he has frequently quoted the famous Muslim surgeon, Abul Qasim Zahrawi. Besides Arabic, Baitar has given Greek and Latin names of the plants, thus facilitating transfer of knowledge.

Ibn Baitar’s contributions are characterized by observation, analysis and classification and have exerted a profound influence on Eastern as well as Western botany and medicine. Though the Jami was translated/published late in the western languages as mentioned above, yet many scientists had earlier studied various parts of the book and made several references to it.