Enikő was born in Békéscsaba, Hungary, the capital of the Hungarian Bekes County. When she was young, her classmates often teased her about her thin physique, some claiming it was caused by illness. When she was 15, an agent discovered her in a shopping mall.In 2002, she entered into the Hungarian Elite Model Look and won.

With her win, she moved on to the international level of the competition, held in Tunis, Tunisia. She placed 4th, losing to Ana Mihajlovic of Yugoslavia. Her career started on the runway. She debuted at the Chanel haute couture show JUL 2006. She walked for only a few designers each season thereafter, but in the S/S 09 shows, she got her big break. She walked for over 50 designers internationally, including Shiatzy Chen, Givenchy, Blumarine, Moschino, Diane von Furstenberg, and Versace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg7yGUi_scY

Mihalik was one of the fresh faces to land in one of the fourteen covers of V magazine fall 2008 issue; the other fresh faces were Anna Selezneva, and Abbey Lee Kershaw. Each cover boasts a head shot of a famous model, either from the new crop of leading models (Agyness Deyn, Lara Stone, Natasha Poly, Anja Rubik, Daria Werbowy etc.) or the supermodel era (Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigova), it was lensed by duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.

Enikő Mihalik is a post from: Imagine Hungary

Life and career

Ernő Rubik was born in Budapest, Hungary, July 13, 1944, during World War II. His father, Ernő Rubik, was a flight engineer at the Esztergom airplane factory, and his mother, Magdolna Szántó, was a poet.^[1] He graduated from the Technical University, Budapest (Műszaki Egyetem) Faculty of Architecture in 1967 and began postgraduate studies in sculpting and interior architecture. From 1971 to 1975 he worked as an architect, then became a professor at the Budapest College of Applied Arts (Iparművészeti Főiskola). He has spent all his life in Hungary.

“Space always intrigued me, with its incredibly rich possibilities, space alteration by (architectural) objects, objects’ transformation in space (sculpture, design), movement in space and in time, their correlation, their repercussion on mankind, the relation between man and space, the object and time. I think the CUBE arose from this interest, from this search for expression and for this always more increased acuteness of these thoughts…”

Ernő Rubik is a post from: Imagine Hungary

Image from imprint.printmag.com

Eva Striker Zeisel (born Éva Amália Striker, November 13, 1906 – December 30, 2011) was a Hungarian-born industrial designer known for her work with ceramics, primarily from the period after she immigrated to the United States. Her forms are often abstractions of the natural world and human relationships.Work from throughout her prodigious career is included in important museum collections across the world. Zeisel declared herself a “maker of useful things”.

Early life and family

She was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1906 to a wealthy, highly educated assimilated Jewish family. Her mother, Laura Polanyi Striker, a historian, was the first woman to get a PhD from the University of Budapest. Laura’s work on Captain John Smith’s adventures in Hungary added fundamentally to our understanding and appreciation of his reliability as a narrator. Laura’s brothers, Karl Polanyi, the sociologist and economist, and Michael Polanyi, the physical chemist and philosopher of science, are also very well known. Despite her family’s intellectual prominence in the field of science, Eva Striker always felt a deep attraction towards art. At 17, Zeisel entered Budapest’s Magyar Képzőművészeti Akadémia (Hungarian Royal Academy of Fine Arts)^[5] as a painter. However, she eventually decided to pursue a more practical profession and apprenticed herself to the last pottery master in the medieval guild system. From him she learned ceramics from the ground up. After graduating as a journeyman she found work with German ceramic manufacturers.

Early career, imprisonment, and emigration

In 1928 Eva Striker became the designer for the Schramberger Majolikafabrik in the Black Forest region of Germany where she worked for about two years creating many playfully geometric designs for tea sets, vases, inkwells and other ceramic items. Her designs at Schramberg were largely influenced by modern architecture. In addition, she had just learned to draft with compass and ruler and was proud to put them to use. In 1930, Eva moved to Berlin, designing for the Carstens factories.

After almost two years of a glamorous life among intellectuals and artists in decadent Berlin, Eva decided to visit Russia at the age of 26 (1932). She stayed for 5 years.

At the age of 29, after several jobs in the Russian ceramics industry—inspecting factories in the Ukraine as well as designing for the Lomonossow and Dulevo factories —Zeisel was named artistic director of the Russian China and Glass industry. On May 26, 1936, while living in Moscow, Zeisel was arrested. She had been falsely accused of participating in an assassination plot against Joseph Stalin. She was held in prison for 16 months, 12 of which were spent in solitary confinement. In September, 1937, Zeisel was expelled and deported to Vienna, Austria. Some of her prison experiences form the basis for Darkness at Noon, the well known anti-Stalinist novel written by her childhood sweetheart, Arthur Koestler. It was while in Vienna that Zeisel re-established contact with her future husband Hans Zeisel, later a noted legal scholar, statistician, and professor at The University of Chicago. A few months after her arrival in Vienna the Nazis invaded, and Eva took the last train out. She and Hans met up in England where they married and sailed for the U.S. with $67 between them.

Website: http://evazeiseloriginals.com/

Eva Striker Zeisel is a post from: Imagine Hungary

In speaking before the House of Representatives after his passing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that Lantos “devoted his public life to shining a bright light on the dark corners of oppression. . . He used his powerful voice to stir the consciousness of world leaders and the public alike.”U2 lead singer Bono called him a “prizefighter,” whose stamina would make him go “any amount of rounds, with anyone, anywhere, to protect human rights and common decency.”

In 2008, after his death, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which he founded in 1983, was renamed the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. Its mission is partly to “to promote, defend and advocate internationally recognized human rights.” In 2011, the Tom Lantos Institute was set up in Budapest to promote tolerance and support minority issues in central and eastern Europe and in the world.

Tom Lantos is a post from: Imagine Hungary

Biography

The Udvar-Házy [ˈudvɒrˈhaːzi] family came to the United States in 1958, fleeing the Soviet occupation of Hungary. Hazy attended the University of California, Los Angeles.

Hazy was still in his 20s during the later part of transition from propeller aircraft to jets during the mid to late 1960s, and realized that the higher capital investment required to purchase jet aircraft created an opportunity for a leasing business. He founded ILFC with two partners in 1973, leasing a single used DC-8 to Aeromexico.

Udvar-Hazy is responsible for a US$65 million grant to the Smithsonian Institution that allowed the U.S. National Air and Space Museum to build the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center annex at Washington Dulles International Airport.^[4] The annex houses more than 120 aircraft and 140 space-exploration exhibits as of 2006, and plans call for eventually installing over 300 aircraft.

The Udvar-Hazy family contributed funds to build the Christine and Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Library and Learning Center at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott Campus. The new library provides students with updated facilities and a great view of the surrounding campus. This donation is the largest to date made to the university.

Steven F. Udvar-Házy is a post from: Imagine Hungary

Szaloncukor

The tradition of hanging these candies on the Christmas tree started in the 19th century. It was named szaloncukor because the tree usually stood in the parlour (szalon in Hungarian). (Cukor means “sugar” or “candy”).

The name comes from the German-Austrian Salonzuckerl, this is why the original name was szalonczukkedli.

Fondant candies originally came in a few flavours (vanilla and strawberry for example), but now there is a wide variety of different kinds of candies, including jelly, coconut, hazelnut and lots of other flavours. It is usually hung on the tree with strings or small metal hooks.

Source and more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szaloncukor

Szaloncukor is a post from: Imagine Hungary

Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York, the son of Sylvia Plachy, a photojournalist, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor and painter.Brody’s father is of Polish-Jewish descent; Brody’s mother – who was raised Catholic – was born in Budapest, Hungary, the daughter of a Catholic Hungarian aristocrat father and a Czech Jewish mother. Brody was raised “without a strong connection to” Judaism or Catholicism.As a child, he performed magic shows at children’s birthday parties as “The Amazing Adrien”. He attended the I.S. 145 Joseph Pulitzer middle school and New York’s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (famous as the inspiration for television’s Fame). His parents enrolled him in acting classes to distance him from the dangerous children with whom he associated. He attended summer camp at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in the Adirondacks in upstate New York.Brody attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook before transferring to Queens College for a semester.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-9CWYhG5hc

Adrien Brody is a post from: Imagine Hungary

History

Officially named as the Church of Our Lady, it has been popularly named after King Matthias, who ordered the transformation of its original southern tower. The church was the scene of several coronations, including that of Charles IV in 1916 (the last Habsburg king). It was also the site for King Matthias’s two weddings (the first to Catherine of Podiebrad and, after her death, to Beatrice of Aragon). During the century and a half of Turkish occupation, the vast majority of its ecclesiastical treasures were shipped to Pressburg (present day Bratislava) and following the capture of Buda in 1541 the church became the city’s main mosque. Ornate frescoes that previously adorned the walls of the building were whitewashed and interior furnishings stripped out.

The church was also a place of the so called Mary-wonder. In 1686 during the siege of Buda by the Holy League a wall of the church collapsed due to cannonfire. It turned out that an old votive Madonna statue was hidden behind the wall. As the sculpture of the Virgin Mary appeared before the praying Muslims, the morale of the garrison collapsed and the city fell on the same day.

Although following Turkish expulsion in 1686 an attempt was made to restore the church in the Baroque style, historical evidence shows that the work was largely unsatisfactory. It was not until the great architectural boom towards the end of the 19th century that the building regained much of its former splendour. The architect responsible for this work was Frigyes Schulek.

The church was restored to its original 13th century plan but a number of early original Gothic elements were uncovered. By also adding new motifs of his own (such as the diamond pattern roof tiles and gargoyles laden spire) Schulek ensured that the work, when finished, would be highly controversial.

It is home to the Ecclesiastical Art museum which begins in the medieval crypt and leads up to the St. Stephen Chapel. The gallery contains a number of sacred relics and medieval stone carvings, along with replicas of the Hungarian royal crown and coronation jewels.

Matthias Church is a post from: Imagine Hungary

Ivan Tors

Biography

Tors wrote several plays in his native country before moving to the U.S. just prior to World War II. He enlisted in the US Army Air Corps then transferred to the Office of Strategic Services.^[3] Following the war he was contracted to MGM as a screenwriter.

In 1952 Tors made Storm over Tibet, his first film as co-writer and producer. He began his partnership with fellow Hungarian Andrew Marton with this film.

Long interested in fact-based science fiction (often with an underwater setting), Tors partnered with actor Richard Carlson in the 1950s to create A-Men Films, a production company devoted to making movies about its own fictitious exploits.

Under the A-Men banner, Tors wrote and produced films such as The Magnetic Monster (1951), Gog (1954), Riders to the Stars (1954) and the TV series Science Fiction Theatre, Sea Hunt, and The Aquanauts (starring Keith Larsen, Jeremy Slate, and Ron Ely and renamed Malibu Run). He created the NBC science fiction series The Man and the Challenge, starring principally George Nader and Jack Ging and was executive producer of Ripcord.

Ivan Torz is a post from: Imagine Hungary

History

In the 1930s Thomas Bata came to Hungary to open a shoe factory somewhere in the country. During a journey he visited Martfű where the railway, public and water traffic meet and he found it suitable for the Tisza Cipő factory. He bought the parcel in 1939, which was 593 cadastral hold, and he paid 325000 pengő for it. The construction begun and the Cikta Rt. – which was the former name of the shoe factory – in 1942 started the production of loungers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKnHjVeZPPw

During the Second World War many things changed in the factory, directors of the factory frequently alternated, however; the Shoe factory never shut down. After the war, the factory suffered many lost, for instance; wooden treaded shoes were manufactured instead of rubber ones. In August 1949, The Cikta Rt was renamed to Tisza Cipő Nemzeti Vállalat (Tisza Shoe National Corporation). During the 1950s and 1960s, the factory produced shoes for the inner market and exported only to socialist countries.

Tisza Cipő official website (Hungarian)

Tisza shoe is a post from: Imagine Hungary