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- Kim Jong-un was born on January 8, 1984 in Pyongyang, North Korea. He is appeared in many documentaries including, Panorama (1953) and Dennis Rodman's Big Bang in PyongYang (2015). He went to boarding school in Switzerland. He has been married to Sol-Ju Ri since 2009. They have three children. On 17 December 2011, Kim Jong-il died and Kim Jong-un took over as the dictator of North Korea. He is the current Dictator for North Korea. He has a military parade in honor of his father and his country. On 12 December 2013, Kim ordered the execution of his uncle Jang Song-Thaek for treason. On November 24, 2014 a movie called The Interview (2014) featured an actor portraying Kim Jong-un caused controversy and a group of hackers hacked Sony Pictures website, despite this the controversial film The Interview was released in theaters and on home video. He is suspected to have killed his half-brother, Jong-Nam Kim, in Malaysia airport in February 2017. Kim Jong-Un was and still is involved with the nuclear missile launches. He and Donald Trump had a war of words in 2017 and almost got the war started, then the South Korean Olympics begin in 2018 and he has limited his nuclear missile tests. Later on in 2018 he and Donald Trump agreed to meet in Singapore and On 12 June, Kim held his first summit with US President Donald Trump and signed a declaration and they both shook hands. On 30 June 2019, Kim again met with President Donald Trump at the Demilitarized zone between North and South Korea and shook hands.
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Kim Jong-IL (born Yuri Irsenovich Kim was a North Korean politician who was the second supreme leader of North Korea from 1994 to 2011. He led North Korea from the 1994 death of his father Kim Il-sung, the first Supreme Leader, until his own death in 2011, when he was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-UN.- Born the fourth of six children to Austrian customs officer Alois Hitler--who had been married twice before--and the former Klara Polzl, Adolf Hitler grew up in a small Austrian town in the late 19th century. He was a slow learner and did poorly in school. He was frequently beaten by his authoritarian father. Things got worse when Adolf's older brother, Alois Jr., ran away from home. His mild-mannered mother occasionally tried to shield him, but was ineffectual. Adolf's attempt to run away at 11 was unsuccessful. At the age of 14 he was freed when his hated father died - an event that he did not mourn.
Hitler dropped out of high school at age 16 and went to Vienna, where he strove to become an artist, but was refused twice by the Vienna Art Academy. By this time Hitler had become an ardent German nationalist--although he was not German but Austrian--and when World War I broke out, he crossed into Germany and joined a Bavarian regiment in the German army. He was assigned as a message runner but also saw combat. Temporarily blinded after a gas attack in Flanders in 1918, he received the Iron Cross 2nd Class and was promoted from private to corporal. In 1918, when the war ended, Hitler stayed in the army and was posted to the Intelligence division. He was assigned to spy on several radical political parties that were considered a threat to the German government. One such organization was the German Workers' Party. Hitler was drawn by party founder Dietrich Eckart, a morphine addict who propagated doctrines of mysticism and anti-Semitism. Hitler soon joined the party with the help of his military intelligence ties. He became party spokesman in 1919, renamed it the National Socalist German Workers Party (NSDAP/NAZI) and declared himself its Führer (leader) one year later. In 1920 Hitler's intelligence handler, Munich-based colonel named Karl Haushofer, introduced the swastika insignia. In 1921 Haushofer founded the paramilitary Storm Troopers ("Sturmabteilung", or SA), composed of German veterans of WWI and undercover military intelligence officers. They helped Hitler to organize a coup attempt--the infamous "beer hall putsch"--against the Bavarian government in Munich in 1923, but it failed. The "rebels" marched on Munich's city hall, which was cordoned off by police. Hitler's men fired at the police and missed; the police fired back and didn't, resulting in several of Hitler's fellow Nazis being shot dead. Hitler himself was arrested, convicted of treason and sent to prison. During his prison time he was coached by his advisers and dictated his book "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") to his deputy Rudolf Hess. He only served several months in prison before being released. By 1925 the Nazi party was in much better straits both organizationally and financially, as it had secured the backing of a large group of wealthy conservative German industrialists, who funneled huge amounts of money into the organization. Hitler was provided with a personal bodyguard unit named the "Schutzstaffel", better known as the SS. The Nazis began to gain considerable support in Germany through their network of army and WWI veterans, and Hitler ran for President in 1931. Defeated by the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler next attempted to become Chancellor of Germany. Through under-the-table deals with powerful conservative businessmen and right-wing politicians, Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933. One month later, a mysterious fire--which the Nazis claimed had been started by "terrorists" but was later discovered to have been set by the Nazis themselves--destroyed the Reichstag (the building housing the German parliament). Then Hitler's machine began to issue a series of emergency decrees that gave the office of Chancellor more and more power.
In March of 1933 Hitler persuaded the German parliament to pass the Enabling Act, which made the Chancellor dictator of Germany and gave him more power than the President. Two months later Hitler began "cleaning house"; he abolished trade unions and ordered mass arrests of members of rival political groups. By the end of 1933 the Nazi Party was the only one allowed in Germany. In June of 1934 Hitler turned on his own and ordered the purge of the now radical SA--that he now saw as a potential threat to his power--which was led by one of his oldest friends, a thug and street brawler named Ernst Röhm. Röhm's ties to Hitler counted for nothing, as Hitler ordered him assassinated. Soon President Hindenburg died, and Hitler merged the office of President with the office of Chancellor. In 1935 the anti-Jewish Nuremburg laws were passed on Hitler's authorization. A year later, with Germany now under his total control, he sent troops into the Rhineland, which was a violation of the World War I Treaty of Versailles. In 1938 he forced the union of Austria with Germany and also took the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia near the German border with a large ethnic German population, on the pretext of "protecting" the German population from the Czechs. In March 1939 Hitler overran the rest of Czechoslovakia. On 23 August 1939 Hitler and Joseph Stalin made a non-aggression treaty. In September of 1939 Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland. France and the British Commonwealth and Empire declared war on Germany. In 1940 Germany occupied Denmark, Norway and the Low Countries, and launched a major offensive against France. Paris fell and France surrendered, after which Hitler considered invading the UK. However, after the German Air Force was defeated in the Battle of Britain, the invasion was canceled. The British had begun bombing German cities in May 1940, and four months later Hitler retaliated by ordering the Blitz. In 1941 German troops assisted Italy, which under dictator Benito Mussolini was a German ally, in its takeover of Yugoslavia and Greece. Meanwhile, in Germany and the occupied countries, a program of mass extermination of Jews had begun.
On June 22, 1941, German forces invaded the Soviet Union. In addition to more than 4,000,000 German troops, there were additional forces from German allies Romania, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Spain and Finland, among others. Hitler used multinational forces in order to save Germans for the future colonization of the Russian lands. Following the detailed Nazi plan, code-named "Barbarossa," Hitler was utilizing resources of entire Europe under Nazi control to feed the invasion of Russia. Three groups of Nazi armies invaded Russia: Army Group North besieged Leningrad for 900 days, Army Group Center reached Moscow and Army Group South occupied Ukraine, reached Caucasus and Stalingrad. After a series of initial successes, however, the German Armies were stopped at Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad. Leningrad was besieged by the Nazis for 900 days until the city of 4,000,000 virtually starved itself to death. Only in January of 1944 was Marshal Georgi Zhukov able to finally defeat the German forces and liberate the city, finally lifting the siege after a cost of some 2,000,000 lives. In 1943 several major battles occurred at Kursk (which became the largest tank battle in history), Kharkov and Stalingrad, all of which the Germans lost. The battle for Stalingrad was one of the largest in the history of mankind. At Stalingrad alone the Germans lost 360,000 troops, in addition to the losses suffered by Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, Czech, Croatian and other forces, but the Russians lost over one million men. By 1944--the same year the Western allies invaded occupied Europe--Germany was retreating on both fronts and its forces in Africa had been completely defeated, resulting in the deaths and/or surrender of several hundred thousand troops. Total human losses during the six years of war were estimated at 60,000,000, of which 27,000,000 were Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and other people in Soviet territory. Germany lost over 11,000,000 soldiers and civilians. Poland and Yugoslavia lost over 3,000,000 people each. Italy and France lost over 1,000,000 each. Most nations of Central and Eastern Europe suffered severe--and in some cases total--economic destruction.
Hitler's ability to act as a figurehead of the Nazi machine was long gone by late 1944. Many of his closest advisers and handlers had already fled to other countries, been imprisoned and/or executed by the SS for offenses both real--several assassination attempts on Hitler--and imagined, or had otherwise absented themselves from Hitler's inner circle. For many years Hitler was kept on drugs by his medical personnel. In 1944 a group of German army officers and civilians pulled off an almost successful assassination attempt on Hitler, but he survived. Hitler, by the beginning of 1945, was a frail, shaken man who had almost totally lost touch with reality. The Russians reached Berlin in April of that year and began a punishing assault on the city. As their forces approached the bunker where Hitler and the last vestiges of his government were holed up, Hitler killed himself. Just a day earlier he had married his longtime mistress Eva Braun. Hitler's corpse was taken to Moscow and later shown to Allied Army Commanders and diplomats. Joseph Stalin showed Hitler's personal items to Winston Churchill and Harry S. Truman at the Potsdam Conference after the victory. Hitler's personal gun was donated to the museum of the West Point Military Academy in New York. Some of his personal items are now part of the permanent collection at the National History Museum in Moscow, Russia. - Emperor Showa (29 April 1901 - 7 January 1989), commonly known in English-speaking countries by his personal name Hirohito, was the 124th emperor of Japan, ruling from 25 December 1926 until his death in 1989. Hirohito and his wife, Empress Kojun, had two sons and five daughters; he was succeeded by his fifth child and eldest son, Akihito. By 1979, Hirohito was the only monarch in the world with the title "emperor". He was the longest-reigning historical Japanese emperor and one of the longest-reigning monarchs in the world.
- Muammar Abu Meniar el-Gaddafi was born in the North African desert, south of Sirte, Libya, in 1942 (the exact date is unknown; some sources day June 1, while others say sometime in September). The son of a poor Bedouin nomad, Gaddafi lived in his family's remote desert camp until he went away to school at age 9.
While a student at a secondary school at Sebha, Gaddafi was inspired by the speeches of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and became a committed Arab nationalist. Gaddafi organized his fellow students into revolutionary study groups at Sebha; he continued the practice at the University of Libya in Tripoli, where he received a history degree in 1963. Following his graduation, Gaddafi entered the Libyan Military Academy in Benghazi, where he found many of the cadets were sympathetic to his anti-Western nationalism.
Commissioned into the Libyan army in 1965, he began laying groundwork for an overthrow of the Libyan monarch, King Idris, whom he considered a pawn of the Western European nations. Within four years Gaddafi took control of the army and on September 1, 1969, he seized power in a carefully planned coup. Assuming command of the government as chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Council, Gaddafi declared himself commander-in-chief of Libya's armed forces and its government, with the rank of colonel. Gaddafi soon began implementing his long-dreamed plans for Libya by nationalizing all foreign banks and oil companies and insisting on closing down all European military bases in Libya. In 1970 Gaddafi seized the private assets of Libya's Italian and Jewish residents, driving them from the country.
Since assuming power, Gaddafi has given strong support to a wide variety of terrorist groups and regimes, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Uganda, the Palestine Liberation Organization and its sub-groups, and the Irish Republican Army. Heavily supported by the Soviet Union, he fought an unsuccessful war against Egypt and a disastrous war against Chad and its ally France for control of the northern regions of the country. In an attempt to drive French forces out of the country Gaddafi sent an invasion force into Chad, only to see it annihilated by the poorly armed, minimally trained but highly motivated Chadian army. The survivors fled back to Libya, leaving behind large numbers of vehicles, equipment and weapons.
Gaddafi has provoked several incidents with the US, one of which led to an American retaliatory bombing raid on his headquarters in Tripoli on April 15, 1986. Gaddafi escaped with only minor injuries but his infant daughter was killed. In 1988 Libyan intelligence agents exploded a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing over 200 people.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US, Gaddafi worked to improve his relationship with the West. In exchange for his help in tracking down Islamic militants his government received concessions from the West, including the easing of various restrictions placed against it due to his terrorism of the 1980s.
In 2011, as part of the "Arab Spring", major civil unrest broke out in Libya aimed at removing Gaddafi from power. Gaddafi began a violent and repressive campaign against his own people and a civil war ensued, with Gaddafi forces on one side and rebels--a combination of students, ordinary people and army defectors-with air and logistical support from NATO, on the other. After an eight-month civil war, Gaddafi was captured by rebels in his hometown of Serte and soon afterward he was executed. - Born in 1900, Heinrich Himmler was the godson of a Bavarian prince and became an officer cadet during the First World War. Never actually seeing combat, Himmler was discharged at the war's end and went to a technical college, where he majored in agriculture. During the turbulent years of the 1920s in which Germany's economy had been destroyed, Himmler managed to secure work as a chicken farmer and also joined one of the numerous paramilitary groups that had sprouted during that time. In 1923 he participated in the failed attempt by the Nazi Party to take over the Bavarian government (even though he was not yet a member of the party). In 1925, after the Nazis had regrouped, Himmler became a minor member of the Nazi Party in its Central Bavarian Office. Also, at that time, he accepted the position as Deputy Leader of a small group called the SS.
In 1929 Himmler became the Reich Leader of the SS, which at the time numbered less than 200 and was a suborganization of the SA. The SA, commonly known as the brownshirts, was the Nazi paramilitary wing, the group that did the actual dirty work--street fights, attacks against political opponents and outright political murders--of the party. Himmler at once expanded the SS, recruited hundreds of new members and introduced racial screening of members and changed the uniform to the much more familiar black jacket with red armband. In 1934 he orchestrated the destruction of the SA, which both he and Adolf Hitler had feared was becoming too powerful a force within the Nazi party, and many SA officials, from top generals on down to common street thugs, were either tried and executed or murdered outright. His actions secured the position of the SS as an independent group within the Nazi Party. He was made "Reichsfuhrer-SS" and now commanded not only the SS proper, but also the forces of the SD (internal security service) and Gestapo (state security police) as well as the fledging military SS then called the Verfungstruppe (later known as the Waffen-SS). In 1936 Himmler gained total police authority in the country by being named as Chief of German Police, and incorporated all of Germany's regular police forces into the SS. Three years later the Second World War began.
Himmler was the official head of the military Waffen-SS, yet in actuality he had little to do with this organization and left its running to such men as Paul Hausser and Sepp Dietrich. Himmer's most notorious activity during the war was setting in motion the extermination of all European Jews, the so-called "Final Solution", in which wholesale genocide was carried out against groups the Nazis considered "undesirable" or racially inferior, resulting in the murders of more than six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others, a task that was assigned to the infamous Reinhard Heydrich.
By 1944 Himmler's SS had amassed total security and police authority in Germany, had a large armed force in the Waffen-SS and was also quite wealthy through the exploits of the SS Economics Office. Meanwhile, the concentration and death camps continued to be run by men of the SS Death's Head (Totenkopf) units. As the fortunes of war turned against Germany and Allied forces invaded the country and drew closer to Berlin, Himmler was given further power and appointed a military commander both of the Home Army and a frontline Army Group. His lack of military experience proved embarrassing and he was soon relieved of those duties. Meanwhile, however, he had climbed the political chain and been appointed Reich Minister of the Interior, which put him in line to be Hitler's successor. By 1945, with Germany crumbling under relentless Allied pressure, Himmler was on the brink of mental collapse and began to convince himself that he would be the postwar leader of Germany and Minister of Police for the Allies. He secretly offered to negotiate the German surrender, but Allied commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower flatly turned the offer down, refusing to have anything to do with the hated Himmler or his SS. When Hitler learned what Himmler had done, he stripped the former chicken farmer of all his ranks and titles and ordered his arrest. Himmler, however, still had much of the SS under his control and commanded it up to the end, even though Karl Hanke had been appointed the new Reichsfuhrer-SS.
After the surrender of Germany, Himmler wandered aimlessly about Bavaria until he was captured by the British. During his interrogation, he bit down on a cyanide capsule hidden in one of his teeth and died within seconds. Feared by many but respected by few, it can be argued that Himmler was more a creation of those who worked under him, like Heydrich, Pohl, Dietrich, Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Hausser, than by his own designs. Heinrich Himmler was survived by his wife and daughter Gudrun, who still lives in Germany and has long been suspected of connections with neo-Nazi groups. - Writer
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Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was born in Predappio, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He was the son of Alessandro Mussolini, a socialist, and Rosa Maltoni, a devout Catholic schoolteacher. In 1915, Mussolini married Donna Rachele Guidi. Together, they had five children. On October 31, 1922, at the age of 39, Mussolini became the Prime Minister of Italy. He was removed from power and placed under arrest by order of King Victor Emmanuel III in July 1943, but two months later was rescued by the Germans and installed as the puppet leader of a German client state, the Italian Social Republic. On April 28, 1945, Mussolini was shot dead by Italian Communists in Giulino di Mezzegra, Lombardy, Italy and his corpse was hung by its feet. He was 61 years old.- Saddam Hussein was a bloody and brutal dictator who kept his country of Iraq at war almost constantly after assuming power in 1979. At least one million people died due to the machinations of Saddam. After his regime was toppled by the U.S. invasion of 2003, he wound up on a gallows, his life terminated at the end of a hangman's noose.
Saddam invaded neighboring Iran in 1980 and waged war for seven years and 11 months, making it the longest conventional war in the 20th Century. Saddam had hoped to take advantage of what he perceived as the chaos of the Iranian revolution to settle border disputes and suppress his own Shi'ite Muslim population. (Iran is predominantly Shi'ite while Hussein was a Sunni Muslim.) The war ended in a stalemate with approximately 500,000 Iraqis and 400,000 Iranians dead. Both sides, major oil producers, suffered economic losses of half-a-trillion dollars. Saddam used poison gas against Iranian troops, an atrocity even Adolf Hitler didn't engage on the battlefields of World War II.
Beginning in 1986 and continuing through 1989, Saddam launched a deliberate campaign of genocide against the Kurds in northern Iraq. The campaign also targeted areas populated by other minorities, including Assyrians and Jews. In 1988, his forces launched a poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja that killed as many as 5,000 people and injured as many as 10,000. In all, Saddam's three-year-long genocide against the Kurds and other minorities claimed as many as 182,000 lives.
In 1990, the war-monger Saddam invaded Kuwait with the intention of looting and annexing the oil-rich country. An international coalition was put together by the first President George Bush and freed Kuwait but left Saddam in power. His son President George W. Bush put together a second coalition army dominated by American and British forces that invaded Iraq in March 2003 to depose the dictator.
The invasion was launched on the pretext that he possessed weapons of mass destruction and was in league with al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that had launched the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Both charges were false, but it led to Saddam's capture in December 2003. He was subsequently tried and executed by the Iraqi interim government for the killing of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in 1982. His death sentence was carried out on December 30, 2006. - Brad Keselowski was born on 12 February 1984 in Rochester Hills, Michigan, USA. He is an actor, known for Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015), Logan Lucky (2017) and NASCAR on ESPN (2007). He has been married to Paige Keselowski since 11 February 2017. They have three children.
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Hermann Göring was born on January 12, 1893, in Rosenheim, Bavaria, the son of a prominent judge. He entered the German Royal Military Academy at Gross Lichterfeide outside Berlin in his teens and graduated in 1911. At the beginning of World War I he saw service as an infantry lieutenant but soon transfered to the air corps. During the war he racked up 22 aerial kills, earning the coveted Blue Max and a promotion to commanding officer of Manfred von Richthofen's "Flying Circus" in 1918 after that famous ace was killed in action. In the years following World War I Göring became one of Adolf Hitler's most devoted followers. The former war hero was named head of Hitler's private army, the Brownshirts, a Nazi paramilitary organization similar to the Blackshirt fascist group in Italy commanded by Benito Mussolini, in 1922. Göring took part in the unsuccessful "Beer Hall Putsch" attempt to overthrow the Bavarian state government in 1923, was wounded and spent some time in prison. In 1933, after Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, Göring became commissioner for aviation and in 1935 commander in chief of the newly established German Air Force (the Luftwaffe). By the opening days of World War II, Göring had built the Luftwaffe into the largest air force in the world. His planes performed superbly in the "blitzkrieg" campaigns against Poland, the Low Countries, Norway and France. In recognition of his work, Göring was promoted to Reichsmarschall (a rank above field marshal) on June 19, 1940. The tall, heavyset Göring became well known for his garish, colorful uniforms and his devotion to the war aims of the Nazi party, rivaled only by Hitler's. Göring didn't confine his efforts on behalf of the Nazi party to purely military matters, however; he also developed much of Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish legislation.
Unfortunately for Göring, his hour of military triumph was short-lived. He seriously botched the Battle of Britain in August and September of 1940 by overestimating the Luftwaffe's capability for long-range combat and underestimating the resolve of Britain's Royal Air Force, which resulted in the loss of huge numbers of his aircraft in daily air raids against England, not to mention the death or capture of thousands of his most experienced bomber crews. During the invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, the Luftwaffe first held the upper hand against the undertrained and underequipped Soviet Air Force. However, it wasn't long before the tide turned, and before long the Russians were turning out thousands of fighters and bombers and inflicting serious damage on the Luftwaffe, which could ill afford such losses. Starting in 1943 Allied bombers had turned the tide of the air war against Germany, and Göring's vaunted Luftwaffe began losing increasing numbers of planes, not to mention experienced pilots, to the US and British air forces, and Allied bombing campaigns smashed many more German aircraft on the ground in addition to destroying many aircraft factories. In April 1945, with the defeat of Germany a certainty, Göring suggested to Hitler that he make peace with the Allies before they brought total destruction to Germany. Enraged, Hitler ordered his arrest. Göring managed to escape from Nazi custody but was captured on May 2, 1945, by soldiers of the U.S. 7th Army. He was eventually tried, convicted and sentenced to death for crimes against humanity during the war crimes trials at Nuremberg late in 1945. His lawyers fought for time with appeals and requests to overturn his death sentence, but they were all denied. On October 15, 1946, just two hours before the former Reichsmarshall was to face the hangman to pay for his crimes, the 53-year-old Hermann Göring committed suicide in his jail cell by taking poison that he somehow had smuggled in with him.- Writer
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Josef Goebbels, the man who almost single-handedly developed the field of propaganda into an art form, would, for a day, be the leader of World War II Germany. Goebbels was born in the German Rhineland to strict Catholic parents. He was short, standing at 5'5", of small stature and thin build, and had a sharp, prominent nose and an oily, sallow complexion. He was rejected by the German army in World War I on the basis of being a cripple, specifically, he had a club foot for which he wore a brace, contracted after a bout of osteomyelitis. After Germany was defeated, Goebbels joined the National Socialist Workers Party, more infamously known as the Nazi party, which opposed the democratic Weimar Republic that had been set up to govern Germany. Because of his impressive oratorical skills and uncanny ability to slant arguments to his view, Goebbels was considered an ideal leader in the Nazi party. It was there that he met Hitler in 1925. Though they both shared a hatred of Jews, Goebbels, a dedicated socialist, initially tried to expel the relatively capitalistic Hitler, who he saw as simply an opportunist. He would change his tune, however, when Hitler rose in rank to become leader. Hitler rewarded Goebbels with a post as Nazi district leader of Berlin, where he would wage year-round political campaigns that eventually drained the organization of virtually all of its funds. He met and married divorcée Magda Quandt around this time. Though their membership grew, the Nazis didn't manage to attract a sizable enough number of voters - especially in Berlin - to attain any kind of legitimate political power, due to both the rebounding German economy and a distrust of the gang of street thugs within the Nazi party called the Sturm Abteilung (SA). However, after the US stock market crashed in 1929, the European economies took a tremendous hit, and the resulting worldwide economic depression hit Germany especially hard. The dire economic straits of many Germans were tailor-made for a demagogue like Hitler, and, slowly, he began to take power; first as Chancellor in 1933, then as Führer in 1934. Goebbels was named minister of entertainment and propaganda, a position that gave him have sole discretion as to what books, magazines, films, radios, newspapers, etc., could print, say, or show. Knowing the media power where the influencing of people was concerned, he searched for a director to place as the head of UFA, Germany's leading film studio. In a famous meeting, he offered the position to respected German director Fritz Lang, who tried to excuse himself by saying that he had Jewish grandparents, to which Goebbels curtly replied, "We will decide who is Jewish!" Lang promptly fled the country and Goebbels settled on a rising female director, Leni Riefenstahl, as the "official" Nazi filmmaker. She directed two documentaries on the party's Nuremburg rallies of 1932 and 1933. The first was disowned by Riefenstahl because of the little time she had to prepare and the fact that it was never shown publicly because the film featured Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA, who along with many SA leaders, was murdered by the Nazi high command when they moved against the SA, just after the film was completed. Their second attempt, on which Goebbels assisted Riefenstahl extensively, is perhaps the most famous propaganda film ever made: Triumph of the Will (1935). It took almost a year to prepare from the miles upon miles of footage shot. It was a success worldwide, but was not particularly popular in Germany at the time. Goebbels then commissioned Riefenstahl to shoot the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which the Nazi leadership assumed would be dominated by German athletes. The Germans did win the total medal counts, but African-American sprinter Jesse Owens shattered the myth of Aryan dominance by winning gold medals in four different events - more than any other competitor - and was idolized by the German crowds.
After World War II broke out, Goebbels was responsible for creating a massive propaganda body of work by the German government, much of which still remains recorded. He was known to use almost anything for propaganda purposes, such as posters from French and German movies with Jewish stars as examples of the "typical Jew." Even when Germany was crumbling in 1945 and the Allies demanded unconditional surrender, Goebbels used that as a motivational tool to demonstrate that every German needed to fight or face destruction.
As Allied forces began to advance toward Germany, a paranoid and rapidly deteriorating Hitler had many of his assistants executed or imprisoned, but Goebbels was given the title of "Defender of Berlin." Hitler committed suicide by gunshot on April 30, leaving Goebbels as the next in command to take over the faltering government, which, by then, controlled only a small part of Berlin. As both Soviet forces on one side and American and British forces on the other closed in on the capital, Goebbels was well aware of the fate he would meet if he were captured alive. On May 1, 1945, he reluctantly endorsed the plan his wife had conjured, which she had communicated to Albert Speer, and permitted her to drug their six children with morphine and proceed to poison them to death through the administration of a cyanide capsule. Later that day, after requesting a moment of privacy with his wife from the onlooking SS soldiers, he shot her in head, as they had also planned, and then took his own life within seconds. Soviet troops, who Goebbels had always boasted would never get to Berlin, found him and his wife partially burnt and unburied outside the Fuhrerbunker. He was survived only by a stepson from Magda's first marriage.- Additional Crew
Joseph Stalin (a code name meaning "Man of Steel") was born Iosif (Joseph) Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in 1878 in Gori, Georgia, the Transcaucasian part of the Russian Empire. His father was a cobbler named Vissarion Dzhugashvili, a drunkard who beat him badly and frequently and left the family when Joseph was young. His mother, Ekaterina Gheladze, supported herself and her son (her other three children died young and Jopseph was effectively an only child) by taking in washing. She managed, despite great hardship, to send Joseph to school and then on to Tiflis Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tbilisi, hoping he would become a priest. However, after three years of studies he was expelled in 1899, for not attending an exam and for propagating communist ideas and the books of Karl Marx.
Since 1898, Stalin became active in the Communist underground as the organizer of a powerful gang involved in a series of armed robberies. After robbing several banks in southern Russia, Stalin delivered the stolen money to Vladimir Lenin to finance the Communist Party. Stalin's gang was also involved in the murders of its political opponents; Stalin himself was arrested seven times, repeatedly imprisoned, and twice exiled to Siberia between 1902 and 1913. During those years he changed his name twice and became more closely identified with revolutionary Marxism. He escaped many times from prison and was shuttling money between Lenin and other communists in hiding, where his intimacy with Lenin and Bukharin grew, as did his dissatisfaction with fellow Communist leader Lev Trotskiy. In 1912 he was co-opted on to the illegal Communist Central Committee. At that time he wrote propaganda articles, and later edited the Communist paper, "Pravda" (Truth). As Lenin's apprentice he joined the Communist majority (Bolsheviks), and was responsible for the consolidation of several secret communist cells into a larger ring. Stalin's Communist ring in St. Petersburg and across Russia played the leading role in the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the revolution the Bolsheviks Communists grabbed the power, then Communists murdered the Tsar and the Russian royal family. Stalin and Lenin took over the Tsar's palaces and used the main one in Kremlin as their private residence.
Lenin appointed Stalin the People's Commissar for Nationalities in the first Soviet government and a member of the Communist Politburo, thus giving him unlimited power. Stalin led the "Reds" against anti-Communist forces known as the "Whites" and also in the war with Poland. He also organized "Red Terror" in Tsaritsin (later renamed Stalingrad). With his appointment as General Secretary to the Party Central Committee in 1922, a post he held for the next 30 years, until his death, he consolidated the power that would ensure his control of the country after Lenin's death in 1924. He also took, or gave himself, other key positions that enabled him to amass total power in the Party and Soviet government.
Stalin was known for his piercing eyes and terrifying stare, which he used to cow his opponents into submission during private discussions. In 1927 Stalin requested medical help for his insomnia, anger and severe anxiety disorder. His doctors diagnosed him as having "typical clinical paranoia" and recommended medical treatment. Instead, Stalin became angry and summoned his secret service agents. The next day the chief psychiatrist, Dr. Bekhterev, and his assistants died of poisoning. In addition, before the doctors' diagnosis about Stalin's mental condition could become known, he ordered the executions of intellectuals, resulting in the murders of hundreds of thousands of doctors, professors, writers, and others.
Stalin's policy of amassing dictatorial power under the guise of building "socialism in the country" resulted in brutal extermination of all real and perceived anti-Communist opposition. His purges of the Soviet military brought about the execution of tens of thousands of army officers, many of them experienced combat veterans of the Revolution, the Civil War, the Polish campaigns and other military operations (this decimation of the Russian officer corps would result in the Soviet Union's initial defeats at the hands of Nazi invaders at the beginning of World War II). He also isolated and disgraced his political rivals, notably Trotsky. Stalin's economic policies of strict centralized planning (i.e., the "five-year plans") resulted in the near ruination of the Soviet economy and mass famines in many areas of the Soviet Union, notably in Central Russia and the Ukraine. Popular resistance to Stalin's policies, such as nationalization of private lands and collective farming, by independent farmers ("kulaks"), brought about brutal retaliation, in which millions of kulaks were either forced off their land or executed outright. Altogether Stalin's economic and political policies resulted in the deaths of up to 10 million peasants during 1926-1934. Between 1934 and 1939 he organized and led massive purge (known as "The Great Terror") of the party, government, armed forces and intelligentsia, in which millions of so-called "enemies of the Soviet people" were imprisoned, exiled or executed. In the late 1930s, Stalin sent some Red Army forces and material to support the Spanish Republican government in its fight against the rebels led by Gen. Francisco Franco and aided by troops and material from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
Stalin made the Non-Aggression Pact with Adolf Hitler in 1939, which bought the Soviet Union two years' respite from involvement in World War 2. After the German invasion in 1941, the USSR became a member of the Grand Alliance and Stalin, as war leader, assumed the title of Generalissimus. He had no formal military training and scorned the advice of his senior officers, due to suspicion and his rising paranoia, actions that resulted in horrific losses to the Russian military in both men and material (not to mention civilian losses). He rejected military plans made by such experienced officers as Marshal Georgi Zhukov, and insisted they be replaced by his own plans, which led to even more horrific losses. Towards the end of WWII he took part in the conferences of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Clement Attlee. The agreements reached in those conferences resulted in Soviet military and political control over the liberated countries of postwar Castern and Central Europe.
From 1945 until his death Stalin resumed his repressive measures at home, resulting in censorship of the arts, literature and cinema, forced exiles of hundreds of thousands and the executions of intellectuals and other potential "enemies of the state". At that time he conducted foreign policies that contributed to the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. Stalin had little interest in family life, although he was married twice and had several mistresses. His first wife (Ekaterina Svanidze, married c. 1904) died three years after their marriage and left a son, Jacob (also known as Yacov), an officer in the Russian army during World War II who was captured by the Nazis and died in a POW camp (his father refused German offers to exchange him for captured German officers). His second wife (Nadezhda Alliluyeva, married 1919) attempted to moderate his politics, but she died by suicide, leaving a daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, and an alcoholic son, Vasili Stalin, who later died in exile. Increasingly paranoid, Stalin launched attacks on such intellectuals as Osip Mandelstam, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Anna Akhmatova, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and many other cultural luminaries. Stalin personally intervened in the fate of "counterrevolutionary" Yiddish writers and changed their sentences from exile to execution. Thirteen of them were executed by the Soviet secret police; their leader, Perets Markish, was executed in the typical KGB manner by a single gunshot to the head on August 12, 1952, in Moscow.
Stalin died suddenly on March 5, 1953, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, after announcing his intention to arrest Jewish doctors, whom he believed were plotting to kill him. The "official" cause of death was announced as brain hemorrhage. Stalin's apprentice, Georgi Malenkov, took the power, but was soon ousted by Nikita Khrushchev. Three years after death, Stalin was posthumously denounced by Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress in 1956 for crimes against the Party and for building a "cult of personality." In 1961 Stalin's body was removed from Lenin's Mausoleum, where it had been displayed since his death, and buried near the Kremlin wall. In 1964 Leonid Brezhnev dismissed Khrushchev and brought back some of Stalin's hard-line policies. After 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev initiated a series of liberal political reforms known as "glasnost" and "perstroika", and many of Stalin's victims were posthumously rehabilitated, and the whole phenomenon of "Stalinism" was officially condemned by the Russian authorities.- Producer
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Emmy-winning talk show host Ellen Lee DeGeneres was born in Metairie, Louisiana, a New Orleans suburb. She is the daughter of Betty DeGeneres (née Elizabeth Jane Pfeffer), a speech therapist, and Elliott Everett DeGeneres, Jr., an insurance agent. Her brother is musician and producer Vance DeGeneres. Her parents divorced when she was 16 years old. Her mother remarried, and her new husband, salesman Roy Gruessendorf, moved the family to Atlanta, Texas.
After graduating from Atlanta High School in 1976, Ellen attended the University of New Orleans as a communications major, but she dropped out after one semester. She held a wide variety of jobs until she turned to stand-up comedy, making her bones at small clubs and coffeehouses before working her way up to emcee Clyde's Comedy Club by 1981. Her comedy was described as a distaff version of Bob Newhart. Beginning in the early 1980s, she toured nationally and was named the funniest person in America after winning a competition sponsored by the cable network Showtime. This led to better gigs, including her first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) in 1986.
Though DeGeneres's early forays into series television were not successful (she appeared as a supporting player in two short-lived TV situation comedies in the period 1989-92, Open House (1989) and Laurie Hill (1992)), she scored a hit headlining her own 1994 sitcom on ABC "These Friends of Mine" (renamed Ellen (1994) after its first season). She made TV history in April 1997, when her character, and DeGeneres personally, revealed that she was a lesbian. However, the show was canceled the following season due to declining ratings, after which DeGeneres returned to the stand-up circuit. In 2001, DeGeneres launched a new series, The Ellen Show (2001), on CBS, but it suffered from poor ratings and was canceled.
Redemption as a television artist came in 2003, when DeGeneres's daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show (2003), proved to be both a critical hit and a commercial success. Along with good ratings, the show has won unprecedented kudos from the industry, winning 15 Emmy Awards in its first three seasons on the air and becoming the first talk show in TV history to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show in its first three seasons.
DeGeneres has also made a name for herself as a host of awards shows. She hosted the Grammy Awards in 1996 and 1997, as well as the Primetime Emmy Awards in 2001 and 2005. In February 2007, she had the ultimate TV awards show gig, hosting the Oscars, which she hosted again in 2014.- Jimmie Johnson was born on 17 September 1975 in El Cajon, California, USA. He is an actor, known for Herbie Fully Loaded (2005), Superstore (2015) and Blaze and the Monster Machines (2014). He has been married to Chandra Janway since 10 December 2004. They have two children.
- Bill Belichick was born on 16 April 1952 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. He is an actor, known for Rescue Me (2004), Fate of a Sport (2022) and The NFL on CBS (1956). He was previously married to Deborah Clarke.
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Junior Johnson was born on 28 June 1931 in Ronda, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for Cars 3 (2017), The Last American Hero (1973) and ESPN Speedworld (1979). He was married to Lisa Day and Flossie Clark. He died on 20 December 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.- Charles André Joseph Marie DE Gaulle (22 November 1890 - 9 November 1970) was a French army officer and statesman who led Free France against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to restore democracy in France. In 1958, he came out of retirement when appointed President of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister) by President René Coty. He rewrote the Constitution of France and founded the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum. He was elected President of France later that year, a position to which he was reelected in 1965 and held until his resignation in 1969.
- Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Pétain (24 April 1856 - 23 July 1951), commonly known as Philippe Pétain, was a French general who attained the position of Marshal of France at the end of World War I, during which he became known as The Lion of Verdun (French: Le lion DE Verdun). From 1940 to 1944, during World War II, he served as head of the collaborationist regime of Vichy France. Pétain, who was 84 years old in 1940, ranks as France's oldest head of state.
- Kaiser William II was born on January 27, 1859 to a Prince and Princess of Prussia. His mother was the daughter of Queen Victoria. He grew up like any Prussian Prince, except for an arm that was deformed from birth. He admired his grandparents who became Kaiser and Empress when he was small. He also admired his English Grandmother Queen Victoria as well as Otto von Bismarck. During his formative years he had to deal with having brothers and sisters. His brother Henry even got married to their cousin Irene (their Aunt Alice's daughter). Because of the attention his parents gave to his arm he grew to detest them.
When William was in his late teens he fell in love with his cousin (the daughter of his Aunt Alice) but she did not love him and got married to Grand Duke Serge of Russia. A few years later he got married to a granddaughter of his grandmother's half-sister. They had several children. In 1888 when his father died he raided his desk to find anything that may have incriminated his father in something, but all that was found was papers about how bad he had been in his life. He was with his grandmother Queen Victoria when she died in 1901. Later that year he lost his mother as well. He did the same thing to his mother that he did with his father with the same results. Vickie had given all her papers to the British ambassador to Berlin a few days before she died.
After his mother died he continued to rule Germany in a back handed manner, and did not like the fact that his Uncle Edward was more powerful than he was. He did not like the fact that he was part of starting World War One because it pitted him against cousins, aunts, and uncles all over Europe and the Americas. His response to his cousin changing their last name to Windsor was that he would like to see the Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha. After the war he had to give up his throne and he went to the Netherlands, where after the death of his first wife he married a second. He stayed married to his second wife till he died at the age of 82 in 1941. - Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I (18 August 1830 - 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and the other states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 2 December 1848 until his death. From 1 May 1850 to 24 August 1866 he was also President of the German Confederation. He was the longest-reigning ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as the longest-reigning emperor and seventh-longest-reigning monarch of any country in history
- Otto von Bismarck was born on 1 April 1815 in Schönhausen, Jerichow II, Province of Saxony, Prussia [now Stendal, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany]. He was a writer, known for Die Entlassung (1942), Film socialisme (2010) and Royal Cousins at War (2014). He was married to Johanna von Puttkamer. He died on 30 July 1898 in Friedrichsruh, Aumühle, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
- Robert Edward Lee was a Confederate general who served the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War, during which he was appointed the overall commander of the Confederate States Army. He led the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most powerful army, from 1862 until its surrender in 1865. During the war, Lee earned a solid reputation as a skilled tactician, for which he was revered by his officers and men as well as respected and feared by his adversaries in the Union Army.
- Ulysses S. Grant was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 and thereafter briefly served as Secretary of War. Later, as president, Grant was an effective civil rights executive who created the Justice Department and worked with Radical Republicans to protect African Americans during Reconstruction.
- Kim Il-sung (15 April 1912 - 8 July 1994) was a North Korean politician and the founder of North Korea, which he led from the country's establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Premier from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to 1994. He was also the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea (Wpk) from 1949 to 1994 (titled as Chairman from 1949 to 1966 and as General Secretary after 1966). Coming to power after the end of Japanese rule in 1945, he authorized the invasion of South Korea in 1950, triggering an intervention in defense of South Korea by the United Nations led by the United States. Following the military stalemate in the Korean War, a ceasefire was signed on 27 July 1953. He was the third longest-serving non-royal head of state/government in the 20th century, in office for more than 45 years.
- Osama bin Laden was the founding General Emir and NATO-FVEY designated criminal mastermind behind his militarist forces under the umbrella of Al-Qaeda, and the world's most sought-after militiaman since the 1998 raids on U.S. embassies in parts of East Africa accused by FBI at him, and then accused of single-handedly masterminding series-of-suicide-aircraft-piracies-colloquially-dubbed-as September 11 attacks by the CIA. He claimed indirect-liability for instigating suicide-hijackers in an exclusive interview later on but nevertheless, refuted the charges of being the mastermind by CIA & others. He used to release tapes endorsing militant acts by framing them as retaliatory, self-defense resistance-operations. Almost 10 years after the execution of 9/11 operation, on a late May 1, 2011 evening according to North American Eastern Daylight Time, 44th US President Barack Obama made an announcement that Osama had been summary-executed by US commandos in a hideout under a covert-op codenamed Operation Neptune Spear with OPTASK (operation task) to assassinate him.
- Dylan Klebold was an American high school senior from Lakewood, Colorado. He and his schoolmate Eric Harris were responsible for the Columbine High School massacre (1999). His psychological profile suggests that Klebold was "an angry depressive, who showed low self-esteem, anxiousness and a vengeful attitude toward individuals who he believed had mistreated him". He had not been diagnosed prior to his death.
In September 1981, Klebold was born in in Lakewood, Colorado. Lakewood is a home rule municipality (self-governing settlement), and one of the most populous cities in Colorado. In 1980, it had a population of about 114,000 people. Klebold's parents named him after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914 -1953).
Klebold's parents were the engineer Thomas Klebold and his wife Sue Klebold (née Yassenoff, 1949-). Thomas initially worked as a sculptor, but found engineering to be a more lucrative profession. Sue worked in assistance services for the disabled, though she later changed her career to caring for people with brain diseases. Through his mother, Klebold was a great-grandson of multimillionaire Leo Yassenoff (1893-1971). Both parents were Lutheran, though Sue came from a Jewish family.
Klebold was raised in a religious household, and "attended confirmation classes in accordance with the Lutheran tradition." He spend the fist two classes of elementary school in Normandy Elementary School , and was then transferred to Governor's Ranch Elementary School . He was considered "exceptionally bright" as a child, and joined a program for students with "high intellectual potential". He was also interested in sports, regularly playing baseball, soccer and T-ball. During his elementary school years, Klebold was a Cub Scout.
After graduating from elementary school, Klebold enrolled at Ken Caryl Middle School. He reportedly found the transition to a new school difficult. Klebold was thought to be painfully shy, and rarely opened up to people. During his middle school years. Klebold befriended Eric Harris, who was a few months older than him. During Klebold's high school years. Harris became his best friend. - Director
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Eric Harris was an American high school senior from Wichita, Kansas. He and schoolmate Dylan Klebold were responsible for the Columbine High School massacre (1999).
In April 1981, Harris was born in Wichita, Kansas. His parents were Wayne Harris and his wife Katherine Ann Poole. Wayne worked as a transport pilot for the United States Air Force, while Katherine Ann was a homemaker. During Harris' early life, his family moved often due to his father's work. In 1983, the Harris family settled in Dayton, Ohio. In 1989, they relocated to Oscoda, Michigan. In 1992, they moved to Plattsburgh, New York. In 1993, Wayne retired from the military. He decided to move to Colorado with his family, which was his birthplace.
According to a later written report by Harris, he resented his father's decision. Harris had friends in Plattsburgh, and he felt alone without them in Colorado. From 1993 to 1996, the Harris family lived in rented accommodations in the Littleton area. In 1996, they purchased their own residence. By that time, Wayne was employed by the Flight Safety Services Corporation. Katherine Ann started a new career as a caterer. Harris' older brother Kevin started taking lessons at the University of Colorado. In 1995, Harris enrolled at the Columbine High School as a freshman.- Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was born on 28 July 1971 in Samarra, Iraq. He died on 26 October 2019 in Barisha, Syria.
- Pol Pot was a Cambodian revolutionary, dictator, and politician who ruled Cambodia as Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1976 and 1979. Ideologically a Marxist-Leninist and a Khmer nationalist, he was a leading member of Cambodia's communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 until 1997 and served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. Under his administration, Cambodia was converted into a one-party communist state and perpetrated the Cambodian genocide.
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'Stone Cold' Steve Austin was born in Victoria, Texas, as Steven James Anderson, on December 18, 1964, the youngest of five children. His mother, Beverly Jane (Harrison), remarried to Kenneth Williams, and he took his stepfather's surname. He played football at the North Texas State University. He was worthy of achieving a free education because of his football skills in school. Williams then began training at Chris Adams's wrestling school as a rookie near the end of 1988, and made his professional wrestling debut at the end of 1989. He then moved over to minor wrestling companies to wrestle for money, and later entered WCW under the name of 'Stunning Steve Austin'. He didn't make a large name for himself in the company, as he only held an embarrassing two TV titles. Austin was fired by WCW and joined the WWF (now known as WWE) in December 1995. Austin left after a while to go to ECW but only stayed for a couple of weeks before he came back to the WWF as 'Stone Cold Steve Austin'. Austin then disposed of his old finishing move the 'Million Dollar Dream', which was the trademark of 'Million Dollar Man' Ted Dibiase, and began racking up the victories with his Stone Cold Stunner (kick to the gut followed by a jawbreaker).
Austin then had a good winning streak going by 1996 and wrestled to become the 1996 King Of The Ring. Austin cut his lip open during one match, and had to get it stitched up in between matches. In the grand final of the KOTR he defeated Jake 'The Snake' Roberts with a Stone Cold Stunner, and invented his famous motto as 'Austin 3:16'. As 1997 rolled around Austin's career soared to new heights. WCW realized Austin's popularity, and tried to make a 'clone' when they invited 'Bill Goldberg' to compete for them. During that year, Austin won the WWF Intercontinental Championship twice and the Tag Team Championships. When Austin successfully defended the IC title against Rocky Maivia (now known as The Rock, real name Dwayne Johnson) on a taping of RAW, he was ordered to defend it again because he drove his pickup truck to the ring and delivered a Stunner to D'Lo Brown ('A.C. Conner') on the roof, which Vince McMahon saw as weapon usage. Austin refused to defend the title again and dumped the old belt in a river, and therefore McMahon crowned Rocky Maivia as the new champion. However, Austin said he didn't care about that title, and set his sights on the Heavyweight Championship. Although Austin had won the 1997 Royal Rumble to qualify as the Number 1 Contender for the championship at WrestleMania XIII, he didn't get the place because he was eliminated but referees didn't notice, so instead, Austin fought Bret Hart in an Iron Man match which Hart won when Austin passed out from blood loss when he was trapped in a Sharpshooter. However, Austin successfully won the 1998 Royal Rumble when he eliminated Rocky Maivia. A stipulation was made for the main event at WrestleMania XIV (Austin vs. Shawn Michaels): the special guest referee would be Iron Mike Tyson! Austin had made a friendship with Tyson, but all though Tyson betrayed him when he joined DX! However, Tyson shocked the world when Austin hit Michaels with a Stone Cold Stunner and covered him while Tyson made the count, to win his first heavyweight title! Austin then went on to enjoy three months as champion when he lost the title to Kane (Glenn Jacobs)in a First Blood match on June 28, 1998, at King Of The Ring. However, Austin regained the title a day later, and was forced to compete for it in a tournament at the 1998 Survivor Series. He was defeated by Mankind ('Mick Foley'), and later that night, The Rock won the championship and joined the Corporation.
As 1999 came around, Austin became embroiled in a feud with The Rock when Vince McMahon eliminated him from the Royal Rumble while The Rock had him distracted. However, Austin still got the place in the main event at WrestleMania XV, and he won his third championship from The Rock with a Stone Cold Stunner. He retained the title against The Rock in a Boiler Room Brawl at Backlash 1999. Austin lost the title to The Undertaker ('Mark Callaway'), but regained it in July 1999. Later that year, at the 1999 Survivor Series Austin was ran over by a car and had to have spinal surgery, and was out of action for the next 11 months. However, Austin returned to the wrestling scene at Backlash 2000 when he helped The Rock win his fourth WWF Championship from Triple H ('Michael Paul LeVesque'). Austin was then welcomed back to wrestle in October 2000 at No Mercy, when he fought Rikishi ('Solofa Fatu') in a No Holds Barred match which had to be stopped when Austin was about to run Rikishi over but was arrested by the police. The mystery was revealed that it was Triple H who had Rikishi run Austin over, and Austin battled Triple H at Survivor Series 2000, and won the match. Steve had a chance to win the WWF title from Kurt Angle, who was reigning at the time, at Armaggedon 2000, in a Six-Man Hell In A Cell Match, which also had Kurt Angle, The Rock, Triple H, Rikishi, and The Undertaker. Austin had the title in his grasp when he hit The Rock with a Stone Cold Stunner, but Angle snuck up and covered The Rock to retain the title.
Austin's hopes raised yet again when he eliminated Kane from the 2001 Royal Rumble, therefore becoming the first and only ever three-time Royal Rumble winner, and the Number One Contender for the WWF Championship. At No Way Out 2001, Austin lost a 2-Out-Of-3 Falls match to Triple H, when they both knocked each other out, but Triple H fell on top of Austin. Later that night, The Rock defeated Kurt Angle to become the first-ever six-time WWF World Champion, therefore deciding that the main event at WrestleMania X7 would be The Rock vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin. Austin defeated The Rock on April 1, 2001, for his fifth WWF title, but turned heel when he joined forces with Vince McMahon. The Rock was suspended from the WWF for almost four months. Austin's reign as Champion lasted for 5 months and 22 days, which was the longest championship reign in several years. Austin won the Tag Team Championship with Triple H at Backlash 2001, but they lost them again on May 21, on a taping of RAW to Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit. In that same match, Triple H tore his quadricep muscle and had to go to hospital for eight months of surgery. At King Of The Ring 2001 on June 24 Austin retained the title successfully from both Jericho and Benoit in a Triple Threat match.
Austin shocked the world by turning heel again on July 22, 2001 when he joined the WCW/ECW Alliance, helping them win the Inaugural Brawl against the WWF, and also invented the catchphrase of 2001, which was "What?". However, Vince McMahon reinstated The Rock on July 30. In August, Kurt Angle started feuding with Austin and was determined to take the championship back from him at Summerslam. Austin disqualified himself to remain the champion, however, Angle won the title back from him at Unforgiven on September 23, 2001. Austin then regained the title from Angle on RAW in October, when William Regal came to his aid. In November, Austin narrowly escaped losing the title to The Rock at Rebellion, with a little help from Kurt Angle. Later that month, The Rock put the WCW/ECW Alliance out of business in the Winner Take All match, which was also Austin's first loss to The Rock. However, Austin returned to the federation, still as the heavyweight champion the night after, but lost it to Chris Jericho on December 9, 2001, when Jericho became the first-ever Undisputed Champion when Austin was defeated in the grand finals. Austin then challenged Jericho for the Undisputed title at No Way Out 2002 in February, and would have won the match, but the nWo interfered and attacked Austin, helping Jericho retain the title. Austin then feuded with the nWo's Scott Hall and faced him in a match at WrestleMania X8, which Austin won, even putting away the difficulty that was made by the constant interfering of Kevin Nash. At Backlash 2002 Austin faced the Undertaker in a Number 1 Contender match for the Undisputed Championship, but Austin was screwed out of the decision when The Undertaker booted a steel chair into his face and covered him for the pinfall. Austin had his foot on the rope, but special referee Ric Flair didn't notice. Austin began feuding with Flair and faced him in a 2-On-1 Handicap match at Judgment Day 2002 - Flair's partner was Big Show Paul Wight. That would be Austin's last PPV match, as early in June, he did not show up for a taping of RAW. Austin has not been seen since. He is 6'2", and when he first entered the federation he weighed 241 pounds, but boosted up to 252 later on in his career. He says that his weight "depends on how much beer I drink".- Actor
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Jack Stephen Burton is an American actor from Indianapolis, Indiana who is known for voicing Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy and playing Jason Morgan from General Hospital. He also acted in The Young and the Restless. He won Emmy awards for his performances on soap operas. He has three children from Shree Gustin.- Actor
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Jeff Gordon was born in 1971 in Vallejo, California, just miles away from the Speedway in Sonoma. He started racing with Go-Carts and Sprint Cars and worked his way up to the NASCAR's Busch Series and then landed a few races in 1992. Gordon's first NASCAR race came when NASCAR Legend Richard Petty was going through his last. Gordon learned quickly and won his first NASCAR Championship in 1995, barely beating out Dale Earnhardt in the Points Standings. Since his Debut in 1992, Gordon has won 3 NASCAR Championships and 55 Races, clearly shooting past Lee Petty and Rusty Wallace in the All-Time Wins Category. Jeff Gordon is seen as one of NASCAR's best and brightest young stars.
In 2005, Gordon suffered his worst season since his rookie year in 1993. Gordon missed out for the Chase for the Nextel Cup, and finishes 11th in points, and finishing outside the top 10 in points since he finished 14th in his rookie year of 1993. Jeff did win 4 races this year. Those races were Daytona, Martinsville, Talladega, and the other Martinsville race. No one saw Gordon's bad season coming, after winning his 3rd Daytona 500, and winning 3 of the first 9 races of the season. After the 3rd win at Talladega, he went 16 races without a top 5 finish, a very uncharacteristic Gordon. Gordon had a crew chief swap when the 10 race Chase began, when Robbie Loomis left the team, and 26 year old Steve Letarte took over. Jeff did manage to get back on track somewhat, and won at Martinsville later in the year, and finished 2nd, 14th, and 9th in the 3 last 3 races following the long overdue visit to victory lane. Jeff at the end of 2005 has a total of 70 career wins.In 2004, Jeff Gordon finished 3rd place in NASCAR Nextel Cup points, behind Kurt Busch, and teammate Jimmie Johnson. Jeff racked up 5 wins that season, bringing his career total to 66. Those 5 wins were at Talladega, California, Martinsville, Daytona, and the other Martinsvile race. In 2003, he became the first driver in Winston Cup history to host Saturday Night Live.
At the end of the 2002 racing season, Jeff ended up in 4th place in the NASCAR Winston Cup points standings. In 2002, Jeff and teammate Jimmie Johnson competed and won in the Race of Champions in Grand Canaria, Spain. In 2001, he became the first driver to win at Kansas Speedway and he won it again in 2002 becoming the only driver to win at Kansas. At the end of the 2002 racing season, Jeff has racked up 61 Winston Cup races. His 3 wins in 2002 were at Bristol, Darlington, and Kansas. He also had 3 poles. As of 2003, Jeff continues to co-own the # 48 race team of Jimmie Johnson. Has won 4 Winston Cup Championships: 1995, 1997, 1998, and 2001 becoming the youngest driver to win than many. With his first championship in 1995, Jeff became the youngest driver at the age of 24 to win a Winston Cup title.
In 1998, he tied a record by winning 13 races in a same season and by winning 4 races in a row. Won 2 Daytona 500s in 1997 and 1999. Became the youngest driver to win the Daytona 500. Won 3 Brickyard 400s including the inaugural one in 1994 and his second one in 1998 and his 3rd one in 2001 making him the first driver to win it more than twice.- Actor
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Terry Eugene Bollea, better known by his ring name Hulk Hogan, is an American retired professional wrestler and television personality. He is widely regarded as the most recognized wrestling star worldwide and the most popular wrestler of the 1980s.
Hogan began his professional wrestling career in 1977, but gained worldwide recognition after signing for World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) in 1983. There, his persona as a heroic all-American helped usher in the 1980s professional wrestling boom, where he headlined eight of the first nine editions of WWF's flagship annual event, WrestleMania. During his initial run, he won the WWF Championship five times, with his first reign being the second-longest in the championship's history. He is the first wrestler to win consecutive Royal Rumble matches, winning in 1990 and 1991. His match with Andre the Giant on WWF The Main Event on February 5, 1988, still holds American television viewership records for wrestling with a 15.2 Nielsen rating and 33 million viewers.
In 1993, Hogan departed the WWF to sign for rival promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW). He won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship six times, and holds the record for the longest reign. In 1996, he underwent a career renaissance upon adopting the villainous persona of "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan, leading the popular New World Order (nWo) stable. As a result, he became a major figure during the "Monday Night Wars", another boom of mainstream professional wrestling. He headlined WCW's annual flagship event Starrcade three times, including the most profitable WCW pay-per-view ever, Starrcade 1997.
Hogan returned to the WWF in 2002 following its acquisition of WCW the prior year, winning the Undisputed WWF Championship for a record equaling (for the year) sixth time before departing in 2003. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005, and inducted a second time in 2020 as a member of the nWo.
Hogan also performed for the American Wrestling Association (AWA), New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) - where he won the original IWGP Heavyweight Championship - and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA - now known as Impact Wrestling).
During and after wrestling, Hogan had an extensive acting career, beginning with his 1982 cameo role in Rocky III. He has starred in several films (including No Holds Barred, Suburban Commando and Mr. Nanny) and three television shows (Hogan Knows Best, Thunder in Paradise, and China, IL), as well as in Right Guard commercials and the video game, Hulk Hogan's Main Event. He was the frontman for The Wrestling Boot Band, whose sole record, Hulk Rules, reached No. 12 on the Billboard Top Kid Audio chart in 1995.- Producer
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Vince McMahon, Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer of WWE, Inc. (WWE), is a third-generation promoter who has made WWE into the global phenomenon it is today.
As a pioneer in the television syndication business, a recognized television personality throughout the world, a visionary promoter and a fearless marketer, he continues to make his presence known as a leader within the broadcast and entertainment industries. In 1972, McMahon joined his father's company, Capitol Wrestling Corporation, on a full-time basis. By 1979, the company had syndicated programming to 30 television stations. In 1982, he purchased the Capitol Wrestling Corporation from his father and decided to take what had been a regional operation and turn it into a national venture.
McMahon soon became an innovator in the cable television industry by leveraging the new technologies of pay-per-view and closed-circuit television for the first WrestleMania in 1985. Now, not only had he built a brand that people would watch in syndication, he had built the WWE into a brand that people would pay to watch. In April 2000, more than 1 million fans purchased WrestleMania X-6, at the time making it the most-watched non-boxing event in pay-per-view history. In February 2014, WWE Network, the first-ever 24/7 direct-to-consumer network, launched live in the U.S.
In 2016, WrestleMania 32 set a new attendance record of 101,763, as fans from all 50 states and 35 countries converged on AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The previous WWE attendance record was at WrestleMania 3 in 1987, where 93,173 fans filled the Pontiac Silverdome.
Today, WWE produces seven hours of live weekly programming 52 weeks a year with no off season. Programs such as "Monday Night Raw" and "WWE NXT" on USA Network and "Friday Night SmackDown" on FOX are ratings successes that can be seen in more than 900 million homes in 180 countries and heard in 28 languages. In addition, WWE hosts more than 550 live events a year within the United States and abroad, making WWE the largest traveling show in the world.
Under McMahon's leadership, WWE has developed into one of the most popular and sophisticated forms of global entertainment today. WWE is an integrated media and entertainment company that features a portfolio of specialized businesses that creates and delivers original content to a global audience. WWE is committed to family friendly entertainment on its television programming, pay-per-view, digital media and publishing platforms. In addition to its headquarters in Stamford, CT, WWE has offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Dubai, Munich and Tokyo. WWE trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol WWE.
In 2017, McMahon established and personally funded a separate entity from WWE, Alpha Entertainment.
For his accomplishments in entertainment, television, and pay-per-view, McMahon, one of the longest running personalities on television, was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008. He also has received a Promax/BDA Lifetime Achievement Award and has been inducted into the 2008 Cablefax Hall of Fame. He has been included in Variety's annual Variety500 listing since 2017, which honors the most influential business leaders shaping the media industry. In 2019, McMahon was named as one of the Most Influential People in Sports Business by Sports Business Journal.
In recognition of WWE's work to support children over the past 30 years, McMahon, in 2005, was appointed to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America's National Advisory Council. He is a tireless supporter of the U.S. military, bringing WWE Superstars to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 to entertain the troops. WWE was the recipient of the USO of Metropolitan Washington's first ever Legacy of Hope award for the company's extensive support of our troops and the USO's Operation Care Package program. In 2006, WWE and McMahon received the Secretary of Defense Exceptional Public Service Award for its support of deployed service members in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, the company received the GI Film Festival's Corporate Patriot Award.- Producer
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Harvey Weinstein was born on March 19, 1952, in Flushing, Queens, New York City, New York, USA, the first of two boys born to Max and Miriam Weinstein. He is a film producer, known for Pulp Fiction (1994), Shakespeare in Love (1998), and Gangs of New York (2002). He has been married and divorced twice; most recently from Georgina Chapman and previously from Eve Chilton.- Jeffrey Epstein was born on 20 January 1953 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He died on 10 August 2019 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.
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Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946 at the Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, New York City, New York. He is the son of Mary Trump (née Macleod) and Fred Trump, a real estate millionaire. His mother was a Scottish immigrant who initially worked as a maid. His father was born in New York, to German parents.
From kindergarten through seventh grade, he attended the Kew-Forest School. At age 13, he enrolled in the New York Military Academy.
In 1964, he began his higher education at Fordham University. After two years, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1968 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics.
From 1971 to 2017, he was chairman and president of his family real estate company, Elizabeth Trump & Son (now called The Trump Organization), which was founded in 1923 by his grandmother and father. His business career primarily focused on building or renovating office towers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses.
He has five children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump with his first wife, Ivana Trump (m. 1977- d.1990), Tiffany Trump with his second wife, Marla Maples (m. 1993- d.1999) and Barron Trump with his third wife, Melania Trump (m. 2005).
He has hosted and produced the reality television series, The Apprentice (2004), which has been nominated for nine Primetime Emmy awards.
He was the 45th President of the United States from January 20, 2017 - January 20, 2021.- Producer
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U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama II was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a white American from Wichita, Kansas. His father, Barack Obama Sr., who was black, was from Alego, Kenya. They were both young college students at the University of Hawaii. When his father left for Harvard, his mother and Barack stayed behind, and his father ultimately returned alone to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil manager and moved to Jakarta when Barack was six. He later recounted Indonesia as simultaneously lush and a harrowing exposure to tropical poverty. He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his grandparents. The family lived in a small apartment - his grandfather was a furniture salesman and an unsuccessful insurance agent and his grandmother worked in a bank - but Barack managed to get into Punahou School, Hawaii's top prep academy. His father wrote to him regularly but, though he traveled around the world on official business for Kenya, he visited only once, when Barack was ten. Obama attended Columbia University, but found New York's racial tension inescapable. He became a community organizer for a small Chicago church-based group for three years, helping poor South Side residents cope with a wave of plant closings. He then attended Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He turned down a prestigious judicial clerkship, choosing instead to practice civil-rights law back in Chicago, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, and married Michelle Robinson (now Michelle Obama, a fellow attorney; their daughters are Sasha Obama and Malia Obama. Eventually, he was elected to the Illinois state senate, where his district included both Hyde Park and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side. In 2004, Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and he gained national attention by giving a rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2008 he ran for President, and despite having only four years of national political experience, he won. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and the first African-American ever elected to that position. Obama was re-elected to a second term in November 2012 - and was sworn in in January 2013. His presidential term ended in January 2017- Vivek Ramaswamy was born on 9 August 1985 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He is an actor, known for No News Is News (2022), PBS NewsHour (1975) and Ron Paul Liberty Report (2015). He has been married to Apoorva Ramaswamy since 31 May 2015. They have two children.
- King Boris III was born on 30 January 1894 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He was married to Princess Giovanna Elisabetta Antonia Romana Maria of Italy. He died on 28 August 1943 in Sofia, Bulgaria.
- The son of NASCAR racing legend Bobby Allison, Davey Allison was born to race. Born in Hollywood, Florida in 1961, the family relocated to Hueytown, Alabama and became known as the "Alabama Gang" in NASCAR circles. Davey was the first, second-generation "Alabama Gang" driver and carried on the tradition established by his father, his uncle Donnie Allison, Neil Bonnett, and Red Farmer. Davey first raced in 1979 on a Birmingham, Alabama short track, scoring his first win in only his sixth start. He graduated from high-school early and concentrated solely on his racing career. His climb to NASCAR's top division started in 1983 when he competed in the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) series, and the NASCAR Dash Series. That year, he won his first superspeedway race in the ARCA event at Talladega. The success continued in 1984 when he won the ARCA Rookie of the Year, and three ARCA events at Talladega, Atlanta, and Macon, Georgia. He also made his first Winston Cup start in 1984, finishing 10th at Talladega in a Hoss Ellington owned Chevrolet. 1985 brought more wins in ARCA (at Talladega and Atlanta) and three more starts for Hoss Ellington in NASCAR. In 1986, Davey made five Winston Cup starts, four for the Sadler Brothers team, and one for Junior Johnson in relief of family friend Neil Bonnett.
In 1987, Harry Ranier hired Davey to drive his #28 Ford, a ride Cale Yarborough vacated to form his own team. The team got off to a fast start, locking down the outside pole position for the season opening Daytona 500. Pit problems relegated the team to a less than satisfactory finish, but the performance helped lock up a sponsorship deal with Texaco-Havoline. The Ranier team ran a limited schedule during 1987, mainly on tracks over one mile in length. The highlight of the 1987 season came in the Winston 500 at Talladega in May. The race featured a terrifying lap 22 crash in which Bobby Allison's car blew a tire, lifted into the air, and crashed into the grandstand fencing. Davey's father walked away from the crash and the race was delayed more than four hours for repairs to the fence. After the restart, Davey had one of the best cars on the track and was in contention for the win late in the day. With darkness falling on the Talladega Superspeedway, Davey took the lead from Dale Earnhardt on a late race restart and drove to his first Winston Cup win in the event. Later that month, Davey won again at Dover, Delaware, becoming the first NASCAR Winston Cup driver to win two events in his rookie year. His performance netted him Rookie of the Year honors in the Winston Cup series.
In 1988, the Ranier team ran the entire Winston Cup schedule. The year started fast as Davey finished second to his father in the Daytona 500. It was Bobby Allison's third victory in NASCAR's biggest race, and he described the finish with his son as the highlight of his career. Davey's Ranier team struggled through the early part of 1988 before tragedy struck the Allison family. During the opening lap of the June race at Pocono, PA, Bobby Allison's car cut a tire, hit the wall, and then was hit in the driver's side by another car. Bobby suffered near-fatal head injuries in the crash that ultimately ended his racing career. Shaking off the effects of a sub-par season and his father's near-fatal crash, Davey finally won at Michigan in August, and won the inaugural race at the new Richmond International Raceway. On October 1, 1988, the engine builder and crew chief for the Ranier team, Robert Yates, bought the team from the financially struggling Ranier. Thus began one of the most celebrated owner/driver relationships in NASCAR history. Davey won two races each in 1989 and 1990, and finished 8th and 13th in the Winston Cup Championship respectively. The 1991 season started with Davey winning the pole position for the Daytona 500, but the team failed to perform otherwise. Five races into the '91 season, crew chief Larry McReynolds was hired and the team began to perform. Davey dominated the Winston All-star event at Charlotte, and one week later won NASCAR's longest event, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte. By the end of the 1991 season, Davey had scored five wins and a third place finish in the Winston Cup Championship. This performance made the Robert Yates team a definite championship contender for the 1992 season.
1992 definitely started well. After dodging a mid-race pileup, Davey drove to victory in the Daytona 500. A second at Rockingham, NC, and consecutive fourth place finishes found Davey at the top of the Winston Cup point standings. But a series of setbacks began at Bristol when a hard crash left Allison with fractured ribs among other injuries. That week, his grandfather, Pop Allison, died. Shaking off the effects of the crash and the loss of his grandfather, Davey scored his second win of the year at North Wilkesboro, NC. He won again at Talladega in May, making him eligible to win NASCAR's Winston Million bonus if he could win either the Coca-Cola 600, or the Southern 500 later in the year at Darlington.
Following Talladega, the series moved to the Charlotte for the Winston All-star event and the 600. Davey won the pole for the Winston, the first to be run under the lights, and looked to be in great position to dominate the event as he did the year before. But the race was much closer and ended with a last lap duel between Davey, Kyle Petty, and Dale Earnhardt. Earnhardt spun in turn three on the last lap and was eliminated. As Allison and Petty came to the checkered flag, Allison nosed ahead to win the event. But contact with Petty sent the #28 Havoline Ford into the wall in a shower of sparks. Davey suffered a concussion and spent the night in a Charlotte hospital. With his best car destroyed, Allison failed to win the 600 the following week, but continued to hold the points lead. He dominated at Michigan in June, then spent two nights in a Charlotte hospital with a virus prior the the July race at Pocono. Davey dominated the first half of the Pocono race, but on lap 149, contact with Darrell Waltrip sent his car into the grass off Pocono's tunnel turn. The car lifted and began a violent series of flips. The car finally came to rest upside-down in the Pocono infield. In an accident that could've been much more serious, Davey suffered only a broken arm, broken wrist, heavy bruises, and a concussion. The crash allowed Bill Elliott to grab the points lead from Davey. The next week, Davey practiced and qualified his car at Talladega. He started the race and drove until an early caution flag allowed him to turn the driving over to Bobby Hillin. Hillin drove the car to a third place finish.
Tragedy struck the Allison family again on August 13, 1992, when Davey's brother, Clifford, was killed during NASCAR Busch Series practice at Michigan. Despite the grief, Davey finished fifth at Michigan and continued his quest for the Winston Cup. On September 6, Davey led much of the Southern 500 at Darlington in his attempt to win the Winston Million. Davey was running fifth, however, when rain cut the event short and Darrell Walrtip was declared the winner. Davey didn't win again until the next to last race at Phoenix. The win, coupled with a DNF by Bill Elliott allowed Davey to regain the points lead. Heading into the final race at Atlanta, six drivers, Allison, Elliott, Alan Kulwicki, Harry Gant, Kyle Petty, and Mark Martin, were elligible to win the Winston Cup. While Elliott and Kulwicki dueled at the front of the field, Allison was forced to recover from minor damaged suffered in an early race incident. The Yates team recovered, and Davey was running sixth and in position to claim the title when Ernie Irvan lost control of his car and collected Davey in a late race crash, ending his chances to win the championship. Elliott would win the event, but Kulwicki led the most laps and finished second, thus earning him the Winston Cup by a mere 10 points.
The Yates team was certainly one of the early favorites to win the title in 1993. Davey scored a win at Richmond in March and collected six top-5 and eight top-10 finishes through the inaugural Winston Cup race at the New Hampshire International Speedway on July 11th, a race in which he finished third. On July 12th, 1993, Davey invited family friend and racing legend Red Farmer to travel with him to Talladega to watch David Bonnett (son of Neil Bonnett) test at the superspeedway. They would be travelling in a helicopter Davey had recently purchased. An accomplished pilot, Davey had recently completed the requirements for his helicopter license. But as he attempted to land in a confined area in the speedway's infield, the helicopter nosed up, then crashed to the ground. Neil Bonnett, who was assisting his son and witnessed the crash, pulled Davey and Red from the wreckage. While Red survived with minor injuries, Davey suffered a serious head injury and was air lifted to Caraway Methodist Medical Center in Birmingham. Early on the morning of July 13, 1993, Davey Allison succumed to his injuries. His death further shook the NASCAR family, which earlier in the year, had lost its champion, Alan Kulwicki, in a plane crash near Bristol, Tennessee. During his brief Winston Cup career, Davey Allison was one of NASCAR racing's brightest stars. In 191 Winston Cup starts, he won 19 times, collected 14 poles, and 66 top-5 finishes. He also won the International Race of Champions (IROC) title, which he was awarded posthumously in 1993. In 1995, Davey Allison was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. In 1998, he was named as one of NASCAR's 50 greatest drivers, and headed a list of six drivers, including Kulwicki, to be inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega, AL. In honor of his induction into the IMHoF, Robert Yates donated the final car driven by Davey to the IMHoF museum. - George S. Patton III was a highly successful and highly controversial general who held Corps- and Army-level commands during World War II. Because of his great competence as a battlefield commander, Patton might have led the American troops during the invasion of Normandy; however, his impolitic ways and a degree of emotional instability (which manifested itself in the slapping of two soldiers suffering from shell-shock at an Army field hospital) put the kibosh on that. Patton was relieved of his command and put on ice for many months in order to recuperate. Instead, the command of the American forces on D-Day, went to his former deputy in North Africa, Omar N. Bradley.
Patton was known as "Blood & Guts" ("Our blood, his guts"), was a common gripe among his troops for his hard-driving discipline, which paid off in lower casualties and great success on the battlefield. With the exception of Douglas MacArthur, Patton ranks as the greatest general the United States put on the field during the Second World War. Patton achieved four-star rank for his battlefield exploits as one of the best commanders of mechanized forces on either side during the War. He succeeded Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Military Governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone in Germany, when Ike -- a five-star general -- was promoted to Army Chief of Staff.
On December 9, 1945, Patton became seriously injured after his automobile crashed with an American army truck at low speed. He began bleeding from a gash on his head, and complained that he was paralyzed and having trouble breathing. Taken to a hospital in Heidelberg, Patton was discovered to have a compression fracture and dislocation of the cervical third fourth vertebrae, resulting in a broken neck and cervical spinal cord injury that rendered him paralyzed from the neck down. He spent most of the next twelve days in spinal traction to decrease the pressure on his spine. He died at age 60 in his sleep of pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure.
On December 24, 1945, General George S. Patton was buried at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial alongside some wartime casualties of the Third Army, in accordance with his request to "be buried with his men". He was immortalized in the 1970 eponymous epic film, which won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor (George C. Scott). This was President Richard Nixon's favorite film. - Additional Crew
Erwin Rommel, aka "The Desert Fox", was one of Adolf Hitler's most able generals during WWII. He joined the German army in 1910 and won awards for bravery in WW I. He was in the 7th Tank Division at the outbreak of WW II and headed the push to the English Channel. Promoted to the rank of lieutenant general, Rommel led the German army in Africa (known as The Afrika Korps) in its mostly successful North African campaign. He drove the British in Libya back to to El Alamein. This led to his promotion to the rank of Field Marshal. Eventually outmaneuvered by British Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery, he returned to Germany, where he was given charge of the defense of northern France. Implicated in the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, he chose suicide rather than execution.- Producer
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Thomas A. Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio, USA as Thomas Alva Edison. He was a producer and director, known for silent movies such as, The Trick Cyclist (1901), The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) and Bicycle Trick Riding, No. 2 (1899). He also produced the first American film version of Frankenstein in 1910. That was of course, twenty years before Universal Studios introduced the monster with Boris Karloff. This paved the way for modern day horror as we now know it. Edison is however, perhaps better known as an inventor of many conveniences like the light bulb. He of course produced many other inventions like, among others, the phonograph, power stations, the carbon switch microphone, and motion picture cameras. These advancements gave him a firm place in the history of American Greatness as well as American film production.
He was married to Mina Miller and Mary Stilwell. He died on October 18, 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey, USA.- Actor
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Mark Hamill is best known for his portrayal of Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy - Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) - a role he reprised in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) and Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019). He also starred and co-starred in the films Corvette Summer (1978), The Big Red One (1980), and Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014). Hamill's extensive voice acting work includes a long-standing role as the Joker, commencing with Batman: The Animated Series (1992).
Hamill was born in Oakland, California, to Virginia Suzanne (Johnson) and William Thomas Hamill, a captain in the United States Navy. He majored in drama at Los Angeles City College and made his acting debut on The Bill Cosby Show (1969). He then played a recurring role (Kent Murray) on the soap opera General Hospital (1963) and co-starred on the comedy series The Texas Wheelers (1974).
Released on May 25, 1977, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) was an enormous unexpected success and made a huge impact on the film industry. Hamill also appeared in The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) and later starred in the successful sequels Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). For both of the sequels, Hamill was honored with the Saturn Award for Best Actor given by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. He reprised the role of Luke Skywalker for the radio dramatizations of both "Star Wars" (1981) and "The Empire Strikes Back" (1983), and then in a starring role in Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017). For the radio dramatization of "Return of the Jedi" (1996), the role was played by a different actor.
He voiced the new Chucky in Child's Play (2019), taking over from Brad Dourif.- Actor
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Nicholas Perry known online as Nikocado Avocado was born on May 19, 1992, in Kherson, Ukraine, to Ukrainian parents, he was later adopted to American parents and moved to Philadelphia where he grew up. He is a classically trained violinist, and graduated at Lower Dauphin High School. He is an Internet Celebrity known for his mukbang eating shows on YouTube. He started his channel in May 2014, where he uploaded his vegan lifestyle with his Colombian husband Orlin and him playing the violin videos, then he started getting into making mukbang videos since he was interested in it, they were healthy eating videos soon, he would take a wrong turn when he quit being vegan in 2016 because of health reasons, he started making theses mukbang videos were he would eat a lot of junk food on camera that of course wasn't vegan food. Later in May of 2017 he would go to Heart Attack Grill and realize that he was 205lbs. After that he would still make a ton of mukbang videos of him eating a lot of junk food almost daily and he would make these videos were he would celebrate his heavyweight. Occasionally in his videos he would fight with Orlin on camera, destroy his food like a toddler, and have mental breakdowns. His content now has become very messed up for the past 4 years because of him wanting to stay relevant. Fans have been shocked the fact a once healthy, nice and skinny youtuber has taken the wrong turn ever since he started mukbanging.- Actor
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Niall Comas is known for Pyrocynical (2014), Hunt Down the Freeman (2018) and A Series of Tubes (2017).- Actor
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Logan Paul is an American vlogger, actor, director and social media phenomenon born in Westlake, Ohio. He is known for The Thinning (2016), Logan Trailer Parody (2017) and Logan Paul Vs (2016).
Logan garnered much of his popularity through the smartphone app Vine. From there, he was featured on the cover of a magazine called AdWeek. Shortly after that, Logan went on a tour, traveling to London, Spain, Germany, China, Japan, Brazil, Belize and France to record himself doing the splits at designated locations. While in Belize, Logan was the first one to ever record a Facebook underwater live stream. While in Brazil, Logan went to the Olympics where he and his roommate created the notorious Olympic dab video which got over 60 million views in 7 days, although, due to copyright issues, the video was removed. Logan also did a collaboration video with Kevin Hart] in an attempt to "bring back the dab". The song feature in the video was by the DJ 'Marshmello'. He has also done short skits with Dwayne Johnson. Logan also wrote, produced and starred in a movie that will be released in 2018 called Airplane Mode (2019).- Actor
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Jake Paul was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He is an American professional boxer and YouTuber. He initially rose to fame on Vine before playing the role of Dirk Mann on the Disney Channel series Bizaardvark. As an actor, he is known for his roles in Airplane Mode (2019), Bizaardvark (2016) and Music Video Sins (2015).- Producer
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Roman Albertovich Abalin is known for NFKRZ (2011), The NFKRZ Podcast (2021) and Bald and Bankrupt (2018).- Born in 7 October 1952 is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has been serving as the president of Russia since 2012, and previously between 2000 and 2008. He also served as the prime minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000, and again from 2008 to 2012.
Putin worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel (podpolkovnik), before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. He moved to Moscow in 1996 to join the administration of president Boris Yeltsin. He briefly served as director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and secretary of the Security Council, before being appointed as prime minister in August 1999. After the resignation of Yeltsin, Putin became acting president and, less than four months later, was elected outright to his first term as president. He was reelected in 2004. As he was constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms as president at the time, Putin served as prime minister again from 2008 to 2012 under Dmitry Medvedev. He returned to the presidency in 2012 in an election marred by allegations of fraud and protests and was reelected in 2018. In April 2021, following a referendum, he signed into law constitutional amendments including one that would allow him to run for reelection twice more, potentially extending his presidency to 2036.
During his first tenure as president, the Russian economy grew on average by seven percent per year, following economic reforms and a fivefold increase in the price of oil and gas. He also led Russia during a war against Chechen separatists, reestablishing federal control of the region. As prime minister under Medvedev, he oversaw military reform and police reform, as well as Russia's victory in its war against Georgia. During his third term as president, Russia annexed Crimea and sponsored a war in eastern Ukraine with several military incursions made, resulting in international sanctions and a financial crisis in Russia. He also ordered a military intervention in Syria against rebel and jihadist groups.[16] During his fourth term as president, he presided over a military buildup on the border of Ukraine. Putin accused the Ukrainian government of committing atrocities against its Russian-speaking minority, and in February 2022, he ordered a full-scale invasion of the country, resulting in numerous atrocities and leading to widespread international condemnation, as well as expanded sanctions and calls for Putin to be pursued with war crime charges.
Under Putin's leadership, Russia has experienced democratic backsliding and a shift to authoritarianism. Putin's rule has been characterised by endemic corruption, the jailing and repression of political opponents, the intimidation and suppression of independent media in Russia, and a lack of free and fair elections. Putin's Russia has scored poorly on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, and Freedom House's Freedom in the World index. Putin is the second-longest currently serving European president after Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. - Yevgeny Prigozhin was born on 1 June 1961 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia]. He was a producer, known for Rzhev (2019), Erin Burnett OutFront (2011) and Arte Journal (1998). He died on 23 August 2023 in Kuzhenkino, Tver Oblast, Russia.
- Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov was born on December 1, 1896, in the village of Strelkovka, Kaluga region, Russia. His parents were peasants. He served during the First World War in the Russian army under Tsar Nicholas II. He was awarded the Cross of St. George twice and promoted for his bravery in battle. He joined the Communist party after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1921, receiving his first Order of the Battle Red Banner for brutal extermination of non-Communist peasants.
Zhukov was not affected by the "Great Terror" and extermination of intellectuals by Joseph Stalin. His star rose quickly after the executions of much of the Red Army leadership by Stalin in 1937-1939. In 1939 Zhukov defeated Japan's Kwantung Army at the Battle of Halhin Gol. His victory became possible due to his detailed planning and skillful use of motorized artillery against the Japanese forces. For that achievement Zhukov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and promoted to full general. During the Second World War Zhukov was appointed Chief of the Red Army General Staff for six months until July 1941.
Zhukov was the only top general who had a major disagreement with Stalin on how to resist the advancing Nazi armies. He attempted to convince Stalin that the city of Kiev could not be held and all troops should be evacuated. Stalin reprimanded Zhukov and dismissed him. Zhukov's fears were proven right wen Kiev was in fact taken by the Germans and 500,000 Russian soldiers were captured and shipped off to Nazi POW camps (many never returned). Stalin was not ashamed and sent Zhukov to organize the defense of Moscow. The Germans were stopped at Moscow not brilliant tactics or planning but by reinforcements rushed in from from Siberia and by the courage of simple soldiers and selfless support from the population. Stalin then sent Zhukov to defend Leningrad. There he organized an impenetrable defense of the city of 3.5 million. Unable to overcome the city's defenses, the Germans laid siege to it in hopes of starving the defenders out. The siege lasted more than 900 days and resulted in the destruction of the German forces that tried to take it, although the city itself lost many of its residents and the soldiers defending it.
Zhukov was assigned by Stalin to several important engagements during the course of the war. In 1942 he was assisted, albeit indirectly, in the defense of Stalingrad by diverting part of the besieging German forces by attacking Rzhev and Vyazma. In 1943 he was fully involved in the strategic planning of the final stages of the Battle of Stalingrad. There he focused on attacking the Romanian and Hungarian units of the German forces, which were more ill-equipped than German units. Stalingrad was won after each side lost under a million people. In July 1943 Zhukov orchestrated the Battle of Kursk, which became the largest tank operation in history. After that victory he went back to besieged Leningrad. There Zhukov led the offensive Operation Bagration in January 1944, which liberated the survivors of Leningrad from long and exhausting siege.
In 1945 Zhukov led the final assault on the Nazi Germany. He was the chief strategic planner for the Battle of Berlin. Under his command the city of Berlin was captured in April 1945, leading to capitulation of the Nazi Germany. He was appointed the first commander of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany, which later became East Germany. Zhukov led the Soviet Victory Parade at the Red Square in Moscow, where he inspected the troops and saluted to Stalin. He was awarded four times the Hero of the Soviet Union. After the victory Zhukov invited the Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower and the two toured the Soviet Union together in the summer of 1945.
Stalin's jealousy led to quick removal of Zhukov from Berlin to a smaller post in Odessa. Humiliated Zhukov supported Nikita Khrushchev. After the death of Stalin, he arrested the main Khrushchev's rival Lavrenti Beria and was appointed the Defence Minister in 1955. Zhukov urged Nikita Khrushchev to send the Red Army troops to suppress the Hungarian revolution in 1956. In 1957 he again supported Khrushchev against the neo-Stalinist hard liners, and was made a full member of the Presidium (Politburo) of the Communist Party. However, when Khrushchev initiated downsizing of the Red Army, Zhukov disputed and was expelled by Khrushchev under suspicion of a planned coup.
In 1964 Khrushchev was dismissed by Leonid Brezhnev who restored Zhukov to favor, though not to power. In 1965, at the important 20th anniversary of Victory gathering in Moscow, Zhukov received a much greater acclaim than Brezhnev. During the Cold War Brezhnev made himself four times Hero of the Soviet Union in an effort to match Zhukov's medal count. Zhukov remained a highly reputable, though controversial and enigmatic figure in the Soviet Union. He died on June 18, 1974, and was buried in Moscow. - Napoleon, also Napoleon Bonaparte and later known by his name Napoleon I, was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. He was the DE factor leader of the French Republic as First Consul from 1799 to 1804. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814 and again in 1815. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy has endured, and he has been one of the most celebrated and controversial leaders in world history.
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Tse-tung Mao, along with Yat-sen Sun and Kai-Shek Chiang, was one of the most important figures to modern Chinese history. Born to a peasant family--his father was a farmer--in Shaoshan, China, on December 26, 1893, Mao was raised in the grinding poverty of rural Hunan province, where he developed a hatred of the Imperial Chinese government while still a boy. In 1911 Mao left school to join the revolution against Manchu rule. In the years that followed, Mao grew increasingly more radical, and in 1921 became one of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party. When a power struggle between the Communists and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists erupted into open warfare in 1927, Mao proclaimed "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" and eagerly joined the fight. Badly outnumbered by Chaing's army, the Communists were slowly driven out of eastern China and, on the brink of defeat, Mao led a retreat to the mountains of the northwest in 1934, a 6,000-mile trek that became known as "The Long March". Mao emerged as one of the top field commanders and became the chairman of the Chinese People's Communist Party.
After forming a new headquarters at Yenan, Mao remodeled the shattered Red Army into a powerful guerrilla force. By 1937 they were fighting the invading Japanese army from their bases in Manchuria. Striking a truce with the Nationalists, the Communists formed an uneasy alliance with Chaing's army to fight the invading Japanese. After the defeat of Japan in World War II in 1945, Mao's forces soon renewed their struggle against the Nationalists for control of China. By striking where Chiang was weak and cultivating the support of the rural peasants, the Communists were able to negate the Nationalist army's overwhelming superiority in men and materials, and by late 1948 the tide had turned against Chiang. In January 1949 Peking fell to the Red Army, forcing Chaing to flee into exile in Taiwan. In October, 1949 Canton, the last Nationalist stronghold, surrendered and on December 7, 1949, the last Nationalists fled to Taiwan, leaving Mao as the undisputed leader of the newly formed People's Republic of China.
Mao established control on China with a "rule of law" similar to the one in the Soviet Union and began to rebuild the war-torn country. A cunning, intelligent and frequently ruthless leader, Mao slowly helped China grow to become a world power. Relations with the US remained cold, and Mao sent Chinese "volunteers"--who were actually regular troops of the Chinese army--to fight with his Communist allies in North Korea in the early 1950s when they were on the verge of defeat after having initially invaded South Korea. Relations remained cold after China tested its first nuclear weapon in the late 1950s. Mao's so-called "five-year plans" to rebuild the farming and industrial economy cost the lives of millions of peasants and political opponents who spoke out against his policies. As relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated in the late 1960s, relations with the US slowly improved and in 1972 the US and China officially established diplomatic relations, with the US officially recognizing the People's Republic of China.
As he got older, Mao's legendary large appetite resulted in his being grossly overweight by age 60, and his being a heavy smoker also contributed to his growing health problems, but he still remained in firm control of his country. Mao died in 1976 at age 82.- Gregory Rasputin was one of Russia's most controversial and mysterious figures who posed as a "holy man" and destroyed the political image and reputation of Russia's Emperor Tsar Nicholas II and his family through a series of political manipulations, disgusting scandals and treachery, provoking a huge wave of public anger and helping the communists to prepare the disastrous Russian revolution. His mysterious activity is still disputed by historians and religious authors, mostly because he left no papers or documents with the exception of a few messages, while acting behind-the-scenes inside the Palaces of the Russian Tsars, and he remained inaccessible to public because of the heavy security that surrounded the Russian Imperial family.
He was born Gregory Efimovich Rasputin in 1869 into a Russian peasant family in Pokrovskoye village, Tobolsk province in Siberia. He was the only surviving child of Efim Yakovlevich Rasputin and Anna Vasilevna Rasputina--their four previous children died before he was born. The family name, Rasputin, has a negative connotation, similar to "ill-behaved" or "ill-aimed". His mother died when Rasputin was young and his father was imprisoned for some time. Gregory had very little schooling and was unable to read or write. At age 16 he was arrested for theft, and the citizens of Pokrovskoe appealed to the authorities to excommunicate and exile him. Rasputin was sentenced to three months in prison, which was later commuted to serving his term at Verkhoturye Monastery in Siberia. Rasputin settled with the lonely monk Makariy, who lived in a rugged hut and practiced rituals akin to ancient shamanic and tribal traditions of the Siberian people. Rasputin mentioned that Makariy had cured him of a severe sleep disorder and trained him to practice hypnotism and a vegetarian lifestyle, which included some alcohol and also the use of various weeds and drugs for "spiritual transformation" according to ancient shamanic rituals.
Rasputin stated later that he modeled himself after Makariy. At that time he became interested in manipulating people through their weaknesses and beliefs, including use of their personal and social habits as well as their politics and religion. He was also introduced to the banned mystical sect of Khlysty (flagellants), whose had a strong sexual content among other exotic practices. Rasputin evolved into a cynical and ruthless manipulator who practiced his principle that "any sin shall make me a holy man" and was spreading his beliefs around. In 1889 Rasputin married Praskovia Feodorovna and had three children, but left his family in Siberia and became a wanderer. He walked across Russia on foot from Siberia to Kiev and back several times during the 1890s, then made a pilgrimage on foot to Greece and Jerusalem during 1901, walking back to Russia and staying in Kazan with a local priest who gave him a letter of recommendation to St. Peterburg, the Russian capital. He arrived in the city in 1903, and solicited money to build a church in his home village of Pokrovskoe. In St. Petersburg Rasputin was accommodated by none other than Father Sergiy (who later, in 1942, was appointed by Joseph Stalin the Head of Orthodox Christianity in the Soviet Union), who was at that time Director of St. Petersburg Holy Academy and Seminary and also was a clandestine political opponent of Tsar Nicholas II. At several reception parties staged by Father Sergiy, Rasputin stunned St. Petersburg society by his forecasts that Russia would be defeated in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904, and that the Russian navy "would sink down", which was exactly what happened next.
Soon the Ober-Procurator of Russia, Pobedonostsev, issued a ban on public appearances of Father Sergiy and Rasputin, declaring that Rasputin was hiding his manipulative traits under the cover of "holyness" and illegally declared himself an Orthodox Christian mystic. Rasputin, however, ignored that ban and continued posing as a "prophet" and healer. He continued his wanderings as a self-proclaimed "holy man", often using lies and hypnotism to intimidate people into submission and then used them for his own goals. He made loose affiliations with various monasteries, then appointed himself a religious "elder" in St. Petersburg. At that time mystical interpretations of Christianity were in vogue, and official Orthodox Christianity was losing its control over people amidst the proliferation of disastrous wars and civil unrest, including revolutions. After the failure of several "religious advisers" to bring peace into the seriously dysfunctional Russian royal family of Tsar Nicholas II, Rasputin was summoned by Anna Vyrubova and the famous ascetic mystic, Father Theofan, the religious adviser to the royal family. In October of 1905 Father Sergiy and Father Theofan arranged Rasputin's introduction to the royal household through some relatives of reigning Romanov family. Rasputin instantly found a way to use the weaknesses and insecurities of Crown Prince Aleksey Nikolaeyvitch Romanov, whose incurable illness--he was a hemophiliac, having inherited the disease from his grandmother, Britain's Queen Victoria--was the main concern of the royal family. Rasputin convinced the Empress, Tsarina Alexandra, that he could improve the health of young Crown Prince Aleksey. Both Tsar Nicholas II and his wife were devastated and demoralized by their son's illness, and their anxiety and desperation was used by Rasputin, and the people behind him, in a crafty way to achieve goals that suited their political agenda.
At the same time Tsar Nicholas was warned by his loyal prime minister, Count Stolypin, that Rasputin was a dangerous fraud who could become a threat to the royal family and to Russia. However, at Tsar Nicholas' insistence, Stolypin had a private meeting with Rasputin. Not long afterward Stolypin was assassinated by a hired terrorist, and the resulting investigation by the authorities was stopped order of the Emperor. Stolypin's records revealed that he had an argument with Rasputin, but he was stopped and intimidated by the hypnotic stare of Rasputin's piercing eyes. Stolypin and many other political figures of that time had documented that Rasputin had "satanic eyes" and he was possessed of a powerful and hypnotic glare that he used to intimidate and cow his enemies. Rasputin also often used verbal abuse and intimidation, including the most foul profanities--a practice considered shocking in the rarefied air of the Russian court--to intimidate and manipulate people into submission. At the height of his political influence, Rasputin was constantly guarded by six agents provided by the Russian security service by order of Tsarina Alexandra. Also by the Imperial order Rasputin was given a new name, Novykh, meaning the "new man", an exclamation attributed to the suffering boy, Crown Prince Aleksey.
Rasputin apparently persuaded both the Empress and her ailing son to ensure that he kept a permanent presence in the tsar's palaces, and he was appointed to an official court position as "personal healer" to Crown Prince Aleksey Nikolaeyvitch Romanov. Rasputin may had some limited beneficial effect on Prince Aleksey's condition through hypnotism, but it apparently was enough to convince both the Empress and the Prince to depend more and more on Rasputin's presence and his hypnotic abilities. Rasputin also insisted that real medical doctors should be kept away from Alexey, constantly telling the family, "Don't let the doctors bother him, let him rest." On the occasions when Aleksey's health had actually improved, Rasputin used the opportunity to take personal credit for the Prince's "improvement", thereby solidifying his control over access to the royal family.
The Empress became a patron of Rasputin, who soon established himself as an extremely powerful figure within the Russian court. The Emperor was calling Rasputin a "holy man" and referred to him as "our friend". Rasputin referred to the Emperor and the Empress only as "papa" and "mama" and always used a frank and "sincere" tone in conversations with the royal family. Meanwhile, government security sources reported about wild orgies at the many parties and gatherings at Rasputin's residence, located just a few blocks away from the Tsar's palace and paid for out of the Russian Treasury. Rasputin's drinking binges were reported as "massive and wild" that often degenerated into drunken and violent sex orgies, designed to entangle politicians and other guests who could prove useful to Rasputin's ambitions. He aggressively indoctrinated his victims by using, among other methods, his motto "Sin that you may obtain forgiveness!", which was in line with the views he learned from the sect of Khlysty.
Soon Rasputin and people behind him succeeded in using his influence to entangle many politicians in scandals, including dirty manipulations involving their wives, drinking parties, promiscuity, and massive embezzlement of the government funds during the First World War, by diverting money to special interests through insiders within the Treasury of Russia. Rasputin also manipulated the Empress Tsarina Alexandra to make controversial political appointments, which led to a bitter divide within all classes of the Russian society, causing a blow to the public image of the Imperial House of the Romanovs. Rasputin's manipulative activities provoked many conflicts within the Russian government and the Russian military command during the First World War. Rasputin was using his position inside the Tsar's Palace to directly interfere with Tsar's communications with the government and media, thus undermining the Tsar's public image. At several times Rasputin was able to interfere with the Tsar's schedule of meetings with political figures as well as military commanders during the war.
In 1914, while visiting a church in Siberian city of Tobolsk, Rasputin was attacked by his former prostitute-friend, Khionia Guseva, who then turned a religious disciple of monk Iliodor. Ms. Guseva approached Rasputin with a knife and wounded him in the stomach, but he recovered from the wound and soon gained an even stronger influence on the Empress Tsarina Alexandra. Later Ms. Guseva said to the Grand Jury that she acted in clear mind and full understanding that "Rasputin is the Antichrist harmful to the people of Russia." However she was declared insane and was forcefully placed in an asylum in Siberia. Rasputin's most destructive actions were committed in 1916, when he convinced the Tsar Nicholas II to move from the Russian capital, St. Petersburg, to the front-lines in Belarus, leaving the Empress Alexandra alone under his influence and in charge of internal politics of the country. In absence of the Tsar, St. Petersburg was surreptitiously over-taken by the revolutionary communists, who penetrated into many regiments of the Army, the Navy, as well as into the local political circles in the capital of Russia, thus preparing for the Communist Revolution of 1917. The decade of Rasputin's destructive manipulations led to irreparable political and economic damage and caused a bitter divide within the government and military command, as well as within all social layers of Russia. At that time the French ambassador Maurice Paléologue made a record that the "Russian Empress is mystically devoted to Rasputin."
Communist leader Vladimir Lenin wrote, "monstrous Rasputin is pushing the Tsar's regime to a disaster", which was helping the communist revolution. According to historians Rasputin was used by a secret group behind the communist revolutionaries, which acted to destroy the Romanov dynasty and the monarchy, and eventually fulfilled their plans and came to power through revolution. That explained how and why Rasputin was manipulated to discredit the royal family and personally the Tsar Nicholas II. Rasputin's main handler was a St. Petersburg's underworld drug lord, named Dr. Badmayev, who controlled Rasputin through his drug addiction and often instructed Rasputin about his political moves. Rasputin often stayed overnight after having a fix at Dr. Badmayev's home in St. Petersburg. At the same time, Rasputin's hypnotic influence over the Empress Alexandra and the Crown Prince Alexey remained very strong, allowing him to make political, ecclesiastical and military appointments for those who served his interests. Rasputin created and used public scandals and rumors about his sexual and alcoholic excesses, and designed crafty entrapments for many members of the Russian political establishment into orgies and scandals for immediate blackmail and exploitation. He polarized the society by using his political influence in securing the appointments and dismissals of several military commanders and government ministers during the First World War. Rasputin's abuse of power and his notorious debauchery was used by the communist propaganda to depict Rasputin with the Empress Alexandra in numerous pornographic comics, drawings and provocative publications as part of a massive negative publicity campaign against the House of Romanovs and the Russian monarchy. In the communist propaganda Rasputin was shown as a peasant who turned the Russian Tsar into a wimp, so the country was in "bad hands" and "proletarians must join with peasants to overthrow the monarchy and take power", so declared the communist leader Vladimir Lenin, who in turn was secretly financed by the German military.
In 1916, during the most difficult time in the First World War, brothers of Tsar Nicholas II obtained evidence that Rasputin was secretly negotiating a peace treaty with Germany while Russia's position in the war was not good. Rasputin said on record that "too many peasants were dead because of the war", indicating his agenda to settle "peace at any cost" which was also in line with the communist propaganda, and helped the German Armies. Peasants deserted from the Russian Army by hundreds of thousands, then armed peasants came to St. Petersburg and joined the communist revolutionary brigades. Rasputin's secret activity and his contacts with the Germans became a political scandal. Tsar's cousin, Grand Prince Nicholas, announced that he wants to hang Rasputin for treachery as a spy in German employ, albeit Rasputin was under the protection of the Empress Tsarina Alexandra, who herself was German. That led to a plot by a group of aristocrats, led by Prince Feliks Yusupov, a relative of the Tsar, to assassinate him, but Rasputin was officially guarded by six agents from the Russian Imperial Security under constant supervision of specially assigned officers who lived in Rasputin's house in St. Petersburg.
In November of 1916, Prince Yusupov pretended that he had chest pains and obtained a high recommendation to become a patient of Rasputin. Prince Feliks Yusupov made several visits to Rasputin as a patient and soon he made friends with Rasputin and presented him a picture of his wife, beautiful Princess Irene Yusupov, niece of the Emperor Tsar Nicholas II. Rasputin immediately became horny and expressed his desire to meet the beauty. On December 16, 1916, Prince Yusupov and his fellow officers designed a plan centered on using the beautiful Princess Irina Yusupov, as a bait. On December 29, 1916, Prince Feliks Yusupov personally invited Rasputin to a dinner and drove him to Yusupov's Moika Palace in St. Petersburg. There Rasputin was waiting for the appearance of the Princess Irina Yusupov, but she never showed up. Meanwhile, Rasputin was plied with wine and food that had been laced with cyanide, albeit the plotters were oblivious to the fact of chemistry that cyanide is often neutralized by some ingredients in food, as it turns into a harmless salt in most desserts and wines. Rasputin also had a condition with hyper-acidity and post-surgical stomach problems which caused him to minimize his intake of sugar and alcohol. When the poison had no apparent effect on Rasputin, Prince Feliks Yusupov pulled out his gun and fired, but Rasputin's life was saved because the first bullet was reflected by the hard metal button on his coat, he was wounded, but still managed to jump up and tried to escape out of the Moika Palace. Then Prince Yusupov and Count Vladimir Purishkevich together with their friend, British intelligence officer Oswald Rayner, pulled out their guns and fired at Rasputin, then, noticing that he was still trying to get up, they clubbed him into submission. In the early morning of December 30, 1916, members of the plot wrapped Rasputin and dragged him into the icy waters until he finally drowned in the Neva River.
Even after his death, Rasputin still remained dangerous and could be used as a destructive and divisive tool, because he left a wild and threatening message to Emperor Tsar Nicholas II and Alexandra, predicting their death and disaster for Russia. Crown Prince Alexey remained gravely ill and was heavily dependent and conditioned to Rasputin's hypnotic influence. Rasputin's body was buried upon Empress Alexandra's and Prince Alexey's request at the location in the park of Tsarkoe Selo, near the Summer Palace of the Russian Tsars. Two months after Rasputin's assassination, Emperor Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, then was arrested as citizen Romanov who was obediently sweeping snow from roads while waiting for his sentence under supervision of communist revolutionaries. Soon both Nicholas and Alexandra became increasingly paranoid about having Rasputin's grave next to his Summer Palace. Ironically, Tsar Nicholas II was under the house arrest in that same palace during the year of 1917, and both Empress Alexandra and Prince Alexey were not allowed to make visits to Rasputin's grave, which was vandalized by revolutionaries in search for valuables. By that time, Rasputin's body was removed upon the order from Aleksandr Kerensky, the head of the Russian provisional government, who previously was a student at the same school and at the same time with the future communist leader Vladimir Lenin. Initially Kerensky ordered to remove Rasputin's body to a remote cemetery, but during the move, Rasputin's body, masked as a piano in a wooden box, was destroyed in the fire started by a group of revolutionaries. Shortly after the Communist Revolution, the entire family of Tsar Tsar Nicholas II with his wife and five children were executed, then Tsar's Palaces were vandalized by the revolutionary communists and Rasputin's grave was again burglarized by poor proletarians in search for jewelery.
Later, while in emigration outside of the Communist Russia (then Soviet Union), both accounts by Prince Feliks Yusupov (who lived through the 1960s) and Count Vladimir Purishkevich (who died in the 1920s) were published in their respectful books of memoirs about their plot and assassination of Rasputin in the context of their participation in the historic events. Prince Yusupov compared Rasputin's cynical and manipulative treatment of the Tsar's family to the Communist Party's ruthless methods of control over innocent people of Russia. Rasputin's own "religious" speeches were interpreted and recorded by his enchanted admirers and titled "holy wanderings" and "holy thoughts" when first published in Russia in 1907 and in 1915. In 1942, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin appointed the notorious St. Petersburg Bishop Sergiy the Patriarch of Orthodix Christianity in the Soviet Union. Then Patriarch Sergiy brought back the name of Gregory Rasputin from oblivion. At the same time some sectarian monks organized rumors about possible canonization of Gregory Rasputin as a "martyr and saint" who was assassinated by the family of the "bad" tsar.
Rasputin's daughter, Matrena Solovyova-Rasputina, and her husband, Boris Solovyov, who secretly collaborated with the Communist regime, took money and jewelery from Empress Tsarina Alexandra in exchange for a promise of assist the Tsar Nicholas II and his family to escape from the Communist regime. They betrayed the Tsar and his family and left them to be killed by the communists, while themselves escaped to France. There Rasputin's daughter, who was money hungry, read the memoirs of Prince Feliks Yusupov, and filed several law suits against Prince Yusupov, who gave accounts of Rasputin's death under oath in 1934 and 1965. Eventually Rasputin's daughter ended up working for a circus as a tiger tamer, then she moved to Los Angeles, and died there in 1977. - Actor
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Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 - April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, he converted the automobile from an expensive luxury into an accessible conveyance that profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.- J. Robert Oppenheimer(April 22, 1904 - February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist who was professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those who are credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project - the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer was among those who observed the Trinity test in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945. He later remarked that the explosion brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." In August 1945, the weapons were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- Andrew Carnegie is a Scottish-American industrialist, and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history. He became a leading philanthropist in the United States and in the British Empire. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away $350 million (conservatively $66 billion in 2024 dollars, based on percentage of GDP) to charities, foundations, and universities - almost 90 percent of his fortune. His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and stimulated a wave of philanthropy.
Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, and immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1848 at age 12. Carnegie started work as a telegrapher, and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges, and oil derricks. He accumulated further wealth as a bond salesman, raising money for American enterprise in Europe. He built Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company, which he sold to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $303,450,000. It became the U.S. Steel Corporation. After selling Carnegie Steel, he surpassed John D. Rockefeller as the richest American for the next several years.
Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to large-scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education, and scientific research. With the fortune he made from business, he built Carnegie Hall in New York, NY, and the Peace Palace and founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others. - Actor
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Born William Henry III is an American entrepreneur, business mogul, investor, philanthropist, and widely known as one of the most richest and influential people in the world. William Henry III was born to attorney, William Henry II and teacher, Mary Maxwell Gates in Seattle, Washington, USA.
Bill Gates as a child was very competitive, curious, and depth thinker. His parents decided to enroll him in the private preparation school, Lakeside School. Gates soon excelled at Lakeside, where he made himself oriented to a wide variety of subject ranging from Math, Science, English Literature and even becoming a superb Drama student. Bill Gates surrounded by historical events at a young age was inspired. In 1969, Apollo 11 took men to the moon, this involved huge computers, and which cost billions of research dollars to function and operate. A computer during that era, was very genuine to have. However, Lakeside had gotten a deal with the city of Seattle and received, this became Bill Gates first encounter toward a computer.
Bill Gates would spend hours,upon hours at the computer room at the high-school, and he eventually met a man named,Paul Allen whom shared the same interests as Bill Gates. Bill Gates in 1973 graduated, Lakeside and was accepted by the prestigious University Of Harvard. Gates during his years at Harvard University never had a definite career plan, for some time he thought of pursuing a career in law for the admiration he had with politics, but his true craze was staying up all day and night with the computer. Bill Gates met Steve Ballmer whom would soon join Gates in his venture to start his own company, Microsoft. This all started when Paul Allen, Bill's former school mate moved to Boston from Seattle for a job. Paul Allen picked up a magazine at Harvard Square which read, "World's First Minicomputer Kit To Rival Commercial Models" to Bill Gates and Paul Allen this was the moment they had been waiting for, the dawn of personal computer had begun. Ed Roberts who ran this phenomenal product was looking for someone to do further programming to it. Bill Gates and Allen Paul soon took on this task and this partnership with Ed Roberts eventually led to the first product made by Microsoft the Altair BASIC. "Microsoft" was created in 1976 Altair BASIC was an programming language which ran on the MITS Altair 8800. Gates due to the success of Altair BASIC decided to drop out of Harvard and never returned to complete his studies. Microsoft was located in Albuquerque from 1976 to 1979. In 1979 they relocated their location to Bellevue Washington on January,1,1979.
Microsoft began to expand and specialize in languages such as Basic,Cobol,Fortan,and Pascal. With this expansion and Microsoft having hit the one million dollar profit margin mark, it was a matter of time until a big-shot computer creative company came knocking at their door. That company was IBM. The partnership IBM and Microsoft developed was a pivotal role which defined technology, to what it has become today. It established what Gates had predicted, every home in America would have one computer per household. IBM wanted an operating system for their new line of personal computers. Bill Gates bought an operating system in which he renamed, MS-DOS for IBM. He received profit from IBM for every MS-DOS product made, as IBM didn't own the licensing fee, and Gates refused to give it to them.
The partnership with Bill Gates and Paul Allen soon ended, due to Paul being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Their partnership would be seen as one which defined the technology field world-wide. This made Gates the sole-man in the Microsoft empire. In 1985, Microsoft had generated 140 million dollars in sales in just that year alone.
In 1986, Bill Gates introduced Microsoft Windows it would be come one of the most used operating systems in history, and one of the most advanced. Apple around this time, came up with an ingenious software, Gates advised them to have a copyright, however Apple was more focused on selling computers, this prompted Gates to take advantage of an open opportunity. At the age of 31, Gates became a billionaire owning 45% of his stock.
Bill Gates always had insecurities, even if he at such a peak. IBM soon to separate from MS-DOS with the success of their sales, decided to create their own operating system which it licensed from Microsoft called Dos2. OS2 eventually failed as Gates decided to invest his name and the entire future of Microsoft to advancing the Windows operating system, even if it meant losing IBM as a client. He came out with Windows 3.0 which turned out be a best market seller. Microsoft was soon becoming a monopoly, and Gates started receiving the reputation of being ruthless,and unfair. Gates was accused for practicing unfair marketing practices, and a case with the Department Of Justice Division Anti Trust Department was opened. Microsoft would receive royalty fee because of a "per-processor" license Microsoft had which stated, for each computer a microprocessor is sold; a royalty payment must be made. Regardless, if it was a Microsoft operating system or not. Operating Equipment Manufacturers saw this as unfair, this would lead him further to be a monopoly, which no software company liked. Apple had no way of competing, IBM had no way of competing, it was Microsoft receiving these royalty fees even for a non-Microsoft Operating System which most manufactures thought was most unfair. Microsoft agreed to stop charging the fees and the Department Of Justice dropped the case.
Bill Gates's mother died shortly after their marriage of breast cancer. Bill Gates because of the influence his mother had on him, created philanthropic organizations that fought certain causes, and was pursuing the interests his mother had. In 1995, Windows 95 was introduced, Bill Gates at this time slowed down on his work with Microsoft as he became a family man, welcoming his first daughter he had with his wife, Melinda French. Netscape came out with a browser which allowed you to access the world of internet. This was a realm, Microsoft had yet to embark. Netscape sales soared through the roof, while Microsoft was behind. Microsoft then promptly released the web-browser Explorer. With the success of Explorer Gates had yet to know he would be receiving a nation-wide law-suit which would cost Microsoft millions. Gates was charged with practicing unlawful conduct, and running a illegal monopoly in 1998. An anti-trust suit along with president Bill Clinton's Justice Department filed a anti-trust suit which would be seen as the most severe lawsuit's related to the technology field. Bill Gates to save his company stepped down from Microsoft as the CEO and allowed Steve Balmer to be CEO. Bill Gates was the Chairman.
Bill Gates changed the way the world operates,functions, Gates made life easier for humans to live in. To get tasks done within seconds at a time, creating several multitasking software programs. Bill Gates will forever be remembered as a business man, philanthropist, and investor. Bill Gates with multiple products unleashed with his company Microsoft, allowed the technology field to expand and become more competitive,always setting the stakes much higher, and presented a field with endless surprises.- Angela Merkel was born on 17 July 1954 in Hamburg, Germany. She has been married to Joachim Sauer since 30 December 1998. She was previously married to Ulrich Merkel.
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Emmanuel Macron was born on 21 December 1977 in Amiens, Somme, France. He is known for Djink Europa 2027 (2009), Djink, Forêt d'Ukraine (2009) and Le Rêve aux Loups (2014). He has been married to Brigitte Macron since 20 October 2007.- Producer
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Jeffrey Jacob Abrams was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles, the son of TV producer parents. At 15, he wrote the music for Don Dohler's Nightbeast (1982). In his senior year of college, he and Jill Mazursky teamed up to write a feature film, which became Taking Care of Business (1990). He went on to write and produce Regarding Henry (1991) and Forever Young (1992). He also co-wrote Gone Fishin' (1997) with Mazursky. Along with other Sarah Lawrence alumni, he experimented with computer animation and was contracted to develop pre-production animation for Shrek (2001).
Abrams worked on the screenplay for Armageddon (1998) and co-created (as well as composing the opening theme of) Felicity (1998), which ran for four seasons. He founded the production company Bad Robot in 2001 with Bryan Burk. He created and executive-produced Alias (2001) and Lost (2004), composing the theme music for both, and co-writing episodes of "Lost". He also co-wrote and produced thriller Joy Ride (2001). He made his feature directing debut with Mission: Impossible III (2006), reinvigorating the series. He produced the hit mystery film Cloverfield (2008) and co-created Fringe (2008).
He directed the Star Trek (2009) reboot, proving successful with fans and newcomers to the franchise. He next directed Super 8 (2011), co-produced by Steven Spielberg and produced Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011). He returned to direct the follow-up to his reboot, Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). Disney and Lucasfilm announced J.J. as their choice for director of the first episode in the new 'Star Wars' trilogy, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015). He initially resisted, as he didn't want to travel away from his family to London, but Kathleen Kennedy convinced him that his voice would be the best to reinvigorate this franchise, as he had done with two others before. He also produced Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) and Star Trek Beyond (2016), and executive-produced Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017). When it was announced that Colin Trevorrow would no longer direct Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019), it was announced that J.J. would return to complete the trilogy he started.- Actor
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Lewis Lovhaug was born on 19 August 1987 in Minnesota, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Atop the Fourth Wall (2008), Atop the Fourth Wall: The Movie (2015) and Longbox of the Damned (2012). He has been married to Viga Victoria Gadson since 12 November 2017.- Born in Solingen, Germany, in 1906, Adolf Eichmann was the son of a moderately successful Austrian businessman and industrialist. In 1914 his family moved to Linz, Austria. During World War I Eichmann's father was a soldier, and returned to the family business in Linz at the war's conclusion in 1918. His family moved to Germany in 1920. When he came of age in 1925 he briefly returned to Austria to study mechanical engineering, but eventually dropped out of college because he was a poor student. He followed in his father's footsteps and became a businessman, working as a traveling salesman, which brought him back to Germany in 1930. His first contact with the Nazi party was when he joined the Wandervogel movement, an anti-Semitic, Aryan-brotherhood type of organization popular with the less-educated segments of German society. In 1932 Eichmann again returned to Austria, where he formally joined the Austrian Nazi Party. On the advice of an old family friend, Ernst Kaltenbrunner--himself soon to become an important Nazi official--Eichmann also joined the Austrian branch of the SS, enlisting on April 1, 1932, and being accepted as a full member that November, assigned the SS number 45326. For the next year Eichmann was a member of the part-time Allgemeine-SS (General SS) with the rank of private, based in Salzburg. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, Eichmann returned there and submitted an application to join the full-time SS. This was accepted and, in November of 1933, he was promoted to Scharführer (Sergeant) and assigned to the administrative staff of the Dachau concentration camp. By 1934 he had decided to make the SS his career and requested transfer into the SS-Security Police which had, by that time, become a powerful and much feared organization. His transfer was granted in November of 1934, and he was promoted to the rank of Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant) and assigned to the headquarters of the Sicherheitdienst (SD) in Berlin. Eichmann became a model administrator in the SD and quickly became noticed by his superiors. In 1937 he was commissioned an SS-Second Lieutenant (Untersturmführer) and, one year later, sent back to Austria to help organize SS security forces in Vienna after the 1938 annexation of Austria into Germany. His efforts resulted in his being promoted to SS-First Lieutenant (Obersturmführer). At the end of 1938 Eichmann was selected by the SS leadership to form the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, which was set up to forcibly deport and expel Jews from Austria. By this time he had become a student of Judaism, finding the religion fascinating as he had, for several years, been harboring deep-seated anti-Semitic tendencies and a virulent hatred of the Jewish faith. At the start of the Second World War Eichmann was an SS-Captain (Hauptsturmführer) and had made a name for himself because of his operation of the Office for Jewish Emigration. He had even been sponsored by the SS Race and Settlement Office to take a trip to Palestine and study aspects of the Jewish homeland. Ironically, through this work, Eichmann made several contacts in the Zionist movement which he worked with to speed up Jewish emigration from the Reich. In 1939 his office was expanded to cover the entire German Reich, and in 1940 Eichmann was transferred from the SD to the Gestapo and promoted to SS-Major (SS-Sturmbannführer). By 1941 he had been promoted again, this time to the rank of Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel), and was the commander of the Jewish Division of the Gestapo Religions Department in the Reich Central Security Office of the SS (the code for Eichmann's position was "RSHA/IV-B4"). In 1942 Eichmann was personally invited by Reinhard Heydrich to attend the Wannsee Conference, where Germany's anti-Jewish measures were developed into an official policy of extermination, which the Germans euphemistically called "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Eichmann was tasked as "Transportation Administrator", meaning he was in charge of all the trains that would carry Jews to the death camps in Poland. For the next two years he performed his duties with incredible zeal and efficiency, often times bragging that he had personally sent over five million Jews to their deaths by way of his trains. His work had been noticed and, in 1944, he was sent to Hungary after Germany had occupied that country to forestall a possible Soviet invasion. He at once went to work deporting Hungarian Jews, resulting in some 200,000 to 400,000 of them meeting their deaths in the Nazi gas chambers.
By 1945, however, Eichmann's world--as was that of the Nazi regime he so loyally and faithfully served--was collapsing, and SS Reich Leader Heinrich Himmler had ordered that Jewish extermination be halted and all evidence of the "Final Solution" be destroyed. Eichmann blatantly defied Himmler's orders and continued his work in Hungary. He was also working to avoid being called up in the last-ditch German military effort, since a year before he had been commissioned a Reserve Lieutenant in the Waffen-SS and had been ordered to active combat duty. Eichmann fled Hungary as the Russians invaded and returned to Austria, where he met up with his old friend Kaltenbrunner. Kaltenbrunner, however, refused to associate with him, since Eichmann's duties as an extermination administrator had certainly branded him a marked man by the Allies, and Kaltenbrunner himself was in enough trouble because of his own activities. As World War II ended Eichmann went into hiding, being briefly captured by American troops but managing to escape by using a false name and claiming to be a demobilized German soldier. He was able to secure passage to South America and left Germany at the start of 1947. He settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, under the name of Ricardo Clement and, for the next 15 years, worked in various odd jobs, from factory foreman to junior water engineer to professional rabbit farmer. He had also brought his family to Argentina and started a completely new life. Eichmann's days of safety in Argentina were numbered, however, because in 1960 the Israeli Mossad--the national intelligence service--had learned that he was in Argentina, and a plan was put in place to locate his exact whereabouts in order to capture him and spirit him back to Israel. When the Israelis finally located him, he was seized, smuggled out of the country to Israel and put on trial in April of 1961 (the Israelis didn't go through normal diplomatic channels because they believed that the Argentine government, which had long been accused of providing a safe haven for wanted Nazi war criminals, would refuse to turn him over). He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. Adolf Eichmann was hanged on June 1, 1962, at the age of 56 and his ashes scattered at sea, so that no nation would serve as his final resting place. - Benjamin Netanyahu was born on 21 October 1949 in Tel Aviv, Israel.
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Matthew Lillard was born in Lansing, Michigan, to Paula and Jeffrey Lillard. He lived with his family in Tustin, California, from first grade to high school graduation. The summer after high school, he was hired as an extra for Ghoulies Go to College (1990). Matthew was the MC of the Nickelodeon program SK8 TV (1990) in 1989. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasedena, California. Along with a friend, Matthew started the Mean Street Ensemble theater company that functioned until 1991, when Matthew moved to New York to attend the theater school Circle in the Square.
Manager Bill Treusch got Matthew auditions for Serial Mom (1994). Matthew was cast as Chip and began another theater company called the Summoners.- Actor
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Dee Bradley Baker is an American voice actor from Indiana. He first became known for voicing Olmec in Legends of the Hidden Temple before voicing Daffy Duck in Space Jam. He is well-known for voicing Klaus in American Dad, the Clone Troopers in several Star Wars media, Ra's al Ghul in Batman: Arkham City, Momo and Appa in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Perry the Platypus in Phineas & Ferb, Sunny Jim in Lobo, Kevin the Sea Cucumber in SpongeBob SquarePants, Numbuh Four in Codename: Kids Next Door and Gravemind in Halo 2.- David Duke was born on 1 July 1950 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. He was previously married to Chloê Hardin.
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Paul Teutul Sr. was born on 1 May 1949 in Yonkers, New York, USA. He is a producer and actor, known for Wild Hogs (2007), American Chopper: The Series (2002) and Algorithm: BLISS (2020). He has been married to Beth Dillon since 29 July 2007. He was previously married to Paula Teutul.- Darrell Wallace Jr. was born on 8 October 1993. He is an actor, known for Cars 3 (2017), Changing Lanes (2010) and I Am Athlete (2020). He has been married to Amanda Carter since 31 December 2022.
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Austin 'Chumlee' Russell was born on 8 September 1982 in Henderson, Nevada, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Driven: The Story of Tanner Godfrey (2013), Pop Star (2013) and Bob Dylan: Like a Rolling Stone (2013).- Producer
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Rick Harrison was born on 22 March 1965 in Lexington, North Carolina, USA. He is a producer and actor, known for Pawn Stars (2009), Blood Sweat and Heels (2014) and Bob Dylan: Like a Rolling Stone (2013).- Richard Harrison was born on 4 March 1941 in Lexington, North Carolina, USA. He was married to Joanne Rhue. He died on 25 June 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
- Corey Harrison was born on 27 April 1983 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. He is an actor, known for Resurrection, Pawn Stars (2009) and Pawn Stars: Best of (2021). He was previously married to Karina.
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The father of four and husband of one, Tony Hawk is arguably the single most influential skateboarder of all time. Born and raised in the hazy daze of Southern California, Tony has forgotten more tricks than most people learn in a lifetime, and his contributions to the sport are endless -- most recently, unearthing skateboarding's holy grail by becoming the only person to successfully land a 900°.- Producer
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Travis Pastrana was born on 8 October 1983 in Annapolis, Maryland, USA. He is a producer and writer, known for Days of My Youth (2014), Action Figures 2 (2018) and Nitro Circus: The Movie (2012). He has been married to Lyn-z Adams Hawkins since 29 October 2011. They have two children.- Writer
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Daniel Edward Aykroyd was born on July 1, 1952 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, to Lorraine Hélène (Gougeon), a secretary from a French-Canadian family, and Samuel Cuthbert Peter Hugh Aykroyd, a civil engineer who advised prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Aykroyd attended Carleton University in 1969, where he majored in Criminology and Sociology, but he dropped out before completing his degree. He worked as a comedian in various Canadian nightclubs and managed an after-hours speakeasy, Club 505, in Toronto for several years. He worked with Second City Stage Troupe in Toronto and started his acting career at Carleton University with Sock'n'Buskin, the campus theater/drama club. Married to Donna Dixon since 1983, they have three daughters. His parents are named Peter and Lorraine and his brother Peter Aykroyd is a psychic researcher. Dan received an honorary Doctorate from Carleton University in 1994 and was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1998.- Actor
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Jonathan Aryan Jafari, known by his internet pseudonym JonTron, is an American comedian, reviewer, and internet personality. He reviews video games, movies, and television shows of varying genres in a retrospective and comedic manner in his YouTube web series JonTron. Jafari was co-creator and former co-host of the Let's Play webseries Game Grumps, and co-created the video game entertainment website Normal Boots. As of August 2019, his YouTube channel JonTronShow has 5.6 million subscribers and 829 million views.
In early 2017, Jafari faced backlash from media outlets and fans after making public comments on race and immigration. Jafari's comments were characterized by news commentators as aligning with far-right or alt-right politics. Shortly after the backlash to these statements, he stepped down as an active member of Normal Boots.- Producer
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LeBron James is an American basketball player and film producer who played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers. He is one of the most accomplished basketball players of the 21st century. He played himself in Space Jam: A New Legacy and Trainwreck. He is the owner of a film production company called SpringHill Company.- Actor
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He is an acclaimed Canadian voice and motion capture artist for the hit game Grand Theft Auto V (2013) in the role of Trevor Philips. He was nominated in numerous events for the role including a VGX nomination for Best Voice Actor.
He was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on November 4, 1973. Before fame, He first appeared on screen as part of a promotion for the National Film Board of Canada. He made his professional debut in an episode of Law & Order (1990). In an amazing trivia, He had roles on television series such as Unforgettable as Larry Yablonski and Broad City as a creepy locksmith. He appeared in a season 3 episode of the James Caviezel starring CBS drama Person of Interest (2011).
Ogg began his acting career in an advertisement for the National Film Board of Canada, before working in various theater productions. Following this, he became more focused on a career in sports, before an injury prevented him from pursuing such a career. After moving to New York, Ogg began acting professionally, starring in television shows such as Law & Order (1990) and Third Watch (1999), in addition to some theater work and voice acting. After taking a break from acting so that he could build a house, Ogg was hired by Rockstar Games to as the voice actor and motion capture artist for Trevor Philips in their video game Grand Theft Auto V (2013). Following the release of the game, Ogg's character was critically acclaimed, and he later had various public appearances, due to his portrayal.- Actor
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Michael Francis Foley was born on June 7th, 1965, in Long Island, New York. Nicknamed Mick by his father, a lifelong Yankees and Mickey Mantle fan, he attended college in upstate New York, he hitchhiked to New York City to see a wrestling match between Jimmy Snuka (Jimmy Snuka) and Don Muraco that convinced him he wanted to be a professional wrestler. He trained under the tutelage of Dominic DeNucci, alongside such wrestlers as Shane Douglas, and made his debut in the late 1980's. He wrestled all around the U.S., Europe, Japan and Africa before landing a job in World Championship Wrestling as under the name Cactus Jack. He wrestled in excellent feuds with Sting (Steve Borden), Rick Steiner, Scott Steiner, and most notably Vader (Leon White), against whom he lost an ear mid-match in Germany in 1992. Around this time, he met his future wife, Collette Foley. His tenure with WCW at an end, he wrestled for Extreme Championship Wrestling under Paul Heyman, and in Japan, where he took place in (and won) the now legendary _IWA King of the Death Match (1995) (V)_. This attracted the attention of 'Vince McMahon', who brought Foley in to the World Wrestling Federation, under the name Mankind. Foley's first feud was with The Undertaker, against whom he wrestled several classic matches, most notably _King of the Ring (1998) (V)_, where, in possibly the most famous professional wrestling moment of all time, The Undertaker threw Foley off the top of a 20-foot cage, through a table. Foley's lifelong dream came true on December 28th, 1998, when he defeated The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) to win the WWF World Title. He would hold the belt three times before his career ended at WrestleMania 2000 (2000). Now retired, Foley is a bestselling and critically acclaimed author, having wrote two autobiographies (both of which topped the New York Times bestseller charts), a series of children's books, and a novel.- Producer
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Peyton Manning is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback for 18 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). Considered to be one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time due to his numerous career achievements, Peyton spent 14 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts and was a member of the Denver Broncos in his last four seasons. Manning played college football for the University of Tennessee, leading the Tennessee Volunteers to the 1997 SEC Championship in his senior season. He is the second son of former NFL quarterback Archie Manning and older brother of New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning.
Peyton Manning was selected by the Colts as the first overall pick in the 1998 NFL Draft. From 1998 to 2010, he improved the fortunes of the struggling Colts franchise and helped transform them into consistent playoff contenders. During his tenure as starting quarterback, Manning led the team to eight division championships, two AFC championships, and one Super Bowl title, the franchise's first in over three decades, as well as their first since relocating to Indianapolis.
After undergoing neck surgery that forced him to miss the entire 2011 season, Manning was released by the Colts and signed with the Broncos. Serving as the team's starting quarterback from 2012 to 2015, he contributed to the Broncos reaching the top of their division each year and his playing career concluded with a victory in Super Bowl 50.
Peyton Manning holds many NFL records, including AP MVP awards (5), Pro Bowl appearances (14), 4,000-yard passing seasons (14), single-season passing yards (5,477 in 2013), single-season passing touchdowns (55 in 2013). He tied for most First-Team All Pros for a quarterback with 7, and is second in career passing yards (71,940) and passing TD (539). At 39 years of age, Manning was the oldest quarterback to start in and win a Super Bowl until Tom Brady surpassed him by winning a Super Bowl at 41.- Ho Chi Minh commonly known as Bác Ho or simply known as Bác, also known as Ho Chu), was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as Prime Minister of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1955 and as President from 1945 until his death in 1969. Ideologically a Marxist-Leninist, he served as Chairman and First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Vietnam.
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Adam Savage started his varied career as a child actor. His father worked on Sesame Street as a Muppeteer and he learned very early on about 'behind the scene' work on a television show. He appeared in some episodes of Sesame Street. Later on, as a teenager, he starred in the Billy Joel video for "Second Wind" and a Charmin toilet paper commercial with Mr. Whipple as Jimmy the stock boy.
Adam has worked as an interior designer, a set designer for the Fool's Fury playhouse in San Francisco, and an artist. His artwork has been displayed in San Francisco, New York and Charleston, West Virginia. He also worked in toy prototyping, working in research and development for Zoob toys, and designing several displays and a large "Zoob Dude" model for them. Adam has worked on many TV commercials for Pizza Hut, Burger King and Coca-Cola, among others. He designed his own robot for Battlebots, "Claymore".
However, Adam is best known for his work in Sci-Fi movies and of course, MythBusters (2003). He was employed by George Lucas' special effects shop, Industrial Light and Magic, working with Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara. He has worked on Space Cowboys (2000), Galaxy Quest (1999), Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and Bicentennial Man (1999), among others. In 2002, Adam and Jamie Hyneman, long time collaborators on various projects, including the BattleBots (2000) robot Blendo, got together to film 3 pilot episodes for Mythbusters. The rest is history. Adam plays around with heavy machinery, indulges in building elaborate rigs, and gets to blow stuff up - always putting his body on the line for the show. He has donated every body fluid imaginable for scientific testing in the course of the show, and has taken many hits for the team. He provides much of the 'comic relief' to co-host Hyneman's 'straight-man' persona.
Adam is the father of twin sons!- Producer
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Jamie Hyneman is a jack of all trades. Graduate in Russian language and literature from Indiana University, Animal Wrangler, Robot Builder, Toy Prototyper and holder of patent no. 6,458,008 for a remote control/stabilization device, Jamie is a truly well-rounded individual.
Besides his time on Mythbusters, Jamie builds items for commercials including the 7-UP can-chucking machine and the Nike Roller-shoe. He also is the CEO of M5 Industries, his own personal shop that he bought when Colossal Industries went under. His shop does a lot of work in movies, television and commercials, as well as toy prototyping. M5 Industries is also where Mythbusters is filmed.
Prior to getting into the special effects industry, he ran a dive/charter business for several years in the Caribbean, and is a certified dive master. He is an animal-wrangler, and has experience with all sorts of critters. He was once a concrete inspector for a few months, and ran a pet store.
On the Comedy Central show BattleBots, Jamie and M5 built and ran the wildly successful and dangerous robot Blendo, and he also worked on DeadBolt. Other participants in the show at the same time as Jamie were Adam Savage and Grant Imahara!
Jamie is happily married, and has said that he is very proud of his wife!- Writer
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James May was born in 1963 but his development was tragically arrested at the age of 12. A confessed 'complete waster' until the age of 42, May then took the decision to apply his talent for the pointless in the direction of television. His oeuvre includes a record for the world's longest train set, building a real house from Lego, propelling children's action figures to beyond the speed of sound, a revival of the cult of duelling, the creation of a mechanical email system, and a wholesale rethink of the pet funeral business. He regards the fish-finger sandwich as the greatest single leap in human progress until the invention of the internet.
He lives in Hammersmith, but his neighbours wish he didn't.- Producer
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Richard Hammond was born in 1969 in the British town of Solihull, which is near to Birmingham although it tries to pretend that it isn't. He started his career in local radio before getting a break on a cable TV car show where he was able to hone his presenting skills, safe in the knowledge that no one was watching. In 2002 he was given his big break on BBC Top Gear and has never looked back, except when pulling out into traffic. He lives almost in Wales and is known as the Hamster, though only by people he has never met.- Writer
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Jeremy Clarkson was born in 1960 in the Yorkshire town of Doncaster in the North of England, an area renowned for its loud shouting and rampant exaggeration. He went to Repton school but didn't really pay attention and then got a job with a local newspaper where he was famed for stories such as 'Literally 50 billion people visit cake sale'. Probably. A chance meeting with a BBC producer saw him cast in the hit show Top Gear and the rest is history. Except for jet packs, which are the future.- Michael Schumacher is a German retired racing driver. He is a seven-time Formula One World Champion and is widely regarded as one of the greatest Formula One drivers of all time. He was named Laureus World Sportsman of the Year twice.
Schumacher holds many of Formula One's driver records, including most championships, race victories, fastest laps, pole positions and most races won in a single season - 13 in 2004 (the last of these records was equalled by fellow German Sebastian Vettel nine years later). In 2002, he became the only driver in Formula One history to finish in the top three in every race of a season and then also broke the record for most consecutive podium finishes. According to the official Formula One website, he is "statistically the greatest driver the sport has ever seen". - Max has a Dutch father and a Belgian mother. So he was born with dual nationality: Dutch and Belgian. He dropped the Belgian nationality when he turned 18 and kept the Dutch nationality. However, he races and always has raced with a Dutch racing license so from that perspective he is more Dutch than Belgian. And that is the way he feels about it too.
- Kyle Larson was born on 31 July 1992. He is an actor, known for Logan Lucky (2017), NBC NASCAR (1999) and NASCAR on Fox (2001). He has been married to Katelyn Sweet since 26 September 2018. They have three children.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts, to Rose Kennedy (née Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald) and Joseph P. Kennedy. John was named after his maternal grandfather, John "HoneyFitz" Fitzgerald, the mayor of Boston. John was very ill as a child and was given the last rites five times, the first one being when he was a new-born. He was the second of four boys born to an Irish Catholic family with nine children: Joseph Jr., John, Robert F. Kennedy (called Bobby), and Ted Kennedy (born Edward). Because Rose made Joe and Jack (the name his family called him) wear matching clothes, they fought a lot for attention. When John was young, the family moved from Boston to New York. John went to Choate, a private school. Most of the time, though, he was too sick to attend. In the late 1930s, father Joe became the ambassador to England. He took sons John and Robert with him, as well as his wife and daughters Kathleen and Rosemary Kennedy. John went to Princeton, then Harvard, and for his senior thesis, he wrote a piece about why England refused to get into the war until late. It was published in 1940 and called "Why England Slept". His older brother Joe was a pilot during the war, and was killed when the bombs his plane was carrying exploded. Not long after that, John's sister Kathleen and her husband died in a plane crash. In the early 1950s, John ran for Congress in Massachusetts and won. He married Jacqueline Kennedy (née Jacqueline Lee Bouvier) on September 12, 1953. Their daughter, Caroline Kennedy, was born on November 27, 1957 and their son, John Kennedy Jr., was born on November 25, 1960. They also had a stillborn daughter named Arabella and a son named Patrick Bouvier, who died a few days after birth. In 1954, J.F.K. had to have back surgery and in the hospital wrote his second book, "Profiles in Courage". His father always said that his son Joe was going to be President of the U.S.; when he died in World War II, though, that task was passed on to John. He ran for president in 1960 against Richard Nixon and narrowly won. His administration had many conflicts, the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis being key examples. In November 1963, he and Jackie (his wife's nickname) went on a trip to Texas. Everywhere they went there were signs saying "Jack and Jackie." On November 22, 1963, John was to give a speech in Dallas, but on his way an assassin hidden on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository opened fire at Kennedy, who was riding in an open car. Hit twice and severely wounded, Kennedy died in a local hospital at 1:00 P.M. The alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was captured a short time later after shooting and killing a Dallas policeman, and was himself assassinated before he could be thoroughly interrogated, let alone tried. In just a little bit of irony, considering the death of Abraham Lincoln a century earlier, Kennedy was shot in a Ford Lincoln (Lincoln was in Ford's Theater when he was shot). He was laid to rest on his son's third birthday.
- Alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, son of Marguerite Frances Claverie Oswald. He never knew his father, Robert Edward Lee Oswald, who had died 2 months before his birth of a heart attack. Oswald had 1 older full brother and another half-brother (from his mother's first marriage). Young Oswald was placed in a Lutheran orphanage at the age of 3, but he was removed when his mother left for Dallas in January 1944 and married her 3rd husband Edwin A. Ekdahl. Oswald left school in 1954. He was in the US Marines until 1959 when he was discharged due to hardship as his mother was suffering from physical problems. Oswald was interested in Marxist ideologies and lived for some time in the USSR (1959-62). He unsuccessfully tried to get Soviet citizenship. When he was initially denied and as his visa was about to expire he even attempted suicide. In 1961 he married a Russian woman, Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova, (Marina Oswald) and was allowed to stay indefinitely. However by October 1963 Oswald moved along with his wife and daughter back to the States, and settled in Dallas. Oswald began to publicly express his opinions about Communist regimes like Cuba and China by distributing pamphlets. He was working for the Texas School Depository, a 6 story building located in the now 'infamous' Dealey Plaza area of Dallas, Texas. On November 22, 1963 when President Kennedy's motorcade passed by the building it is believed that Oswald was in the building. He may shot the president from the 6th floor and then concealed the rifle behind some crates. Whether he acted alone or not is still an ongoing debate. Oswald apparently left the depository when pandemonium broke out after the incident. He then headed home where he picked up a pistol. Oswald returned to the Depository where he is believed to have fired 4 bullets into police officer J.D. Tippit who approached him to ask him a question. Oswald then ran into the Texas Theatre where the double bill: War Is Hell (1961) and Cry of Battle (1963) was playing. He had not bought a ticket and the authorities cornered him in the theatre and quickly took him into custody. On 23 November 1963 he was charged with the murder of President Kennedy, whom he was alleged to have shot from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, as the President passed by in a motor cavalcade. Oswald however vehemently denied his involvement in both the Kennedy assassination and the shooting of officer Tippit. On November 24, 1963 just 2 days later, while authorities were transferring Oswald to the county jail, he was shot dead by night club owner Jack Ruby (1911-67), live before the cameras. Ruby claimed he was avenging Jacqueline Kennedy (Jackie Kennedy Onassis). Claims were made that Oswald had links with the US secret service and with the Mafia. But it seems that there are more conspiracy theories than facts.
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Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born in Birán, Holguin Province, Cuba, the fifth of nine children of Ángel María Bautista Castro y Argiz, a plantation owner originally from Galicia, Spain, who operated a plantation in Cuba's Oriente Province. His mother, Lina Ruz González, was a servant in his father's home who bore Fidel out of wedlock (they later were married several years after Angel's first wife died). Known as a rebellious, loud, and troublesome child, Fidel was sent to a Jesuit boarding school in Santiago de Cuba, where he was often teased by his wealthier classmates who called him a "peasant." He later attended Belen College before enrolling at the University of Havana, where he earned a law degree. After graduating from the university, Castro briefly practiced law, before he went on to marry Mirta Diaz-Balart, a wealthy philosophy student with family ties to Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. They had a son, Fidelito, but after 5 years, the couple divorce and went their separate ways. After several years in prison and exile (he lived in Mexico and New York City before starting the revolution) Castro led an attack on the Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953. The attack, which was a major attack on Batista's hold of Cuba, found Castro once again imprisoned before he was released. After his release he went to the Yucatan, where he organized a rebel force that landed in Cuba in 1958 and after many successful battles, Castro rode triumphantly into Havana on January 8, 1959.- Writer
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Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of Alberta Christine (Williams), a schoolteacher, and Martin Luther King Sr. a pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. For Martin the civil rights movement began one summer in 1935 when he was six years old. Two of his friends did not show up to play ball with him and Martin decided to go looking for them. When he went to one of the boys' house, their mother met him at the front door and told him in a rude tone that her son would not be coming out to play with him that day or any other day because they were white and he was black. Years later, Martin admitted that those cruel words altered the direction of his life. As a teenager, Martin went through school with great distinction. He skipped ninth and 12th grades, and excelled on the violin and as as a public speaker. One evening after taking top prize in a debate tournament, he and his teacher were riding home on the bus discussing the event when the driver ordered them to give up their seats for two white passengers who had just boarded. Martin was infuriated as he recalled, "I intended to stay right in my seat and protest," but his teacher convinced him to obey the law and they stood for the remainder of the 90-mile trip. "That night will never leave my memory as long as I live. It was the angriest I had ever been in my life. Never before, or afterward, can I remember myself being so angry," he later recalled.
Martin entered Morehouse College, his father's alma mater, when he was 15 with the intention of becoming a doctor or lawyer. After graduating from Morehouse at the age of 19, he decided to enter Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. This private nondenominational college had only 100 students at the time, and Martin was one of six black students. This was the first time that he had lived in a community that was mostly white. He won the highest class ranking and a $1,200 fellowship for graduate school. In 1951 he entered Boston University School of Theology to to pursue his Ph.D. While at Crozer Martin had attended a lecture by Howard University President Mordecai Johnson, who spoke about Mohandas K. Gandhi, India's spiritual leader whose nonviolent protests helped to free his country from British rule, and that gave Martin the basis for positive change. It was here that he met and married his wife Coretta Scott King, who was a soprano studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1954 Martin accepted a call to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, to be its pastor. Despite Coretta's warning that it would not be safe for them in Alabama, the poorest and most racist state in the US, Martin insisted that they move there. Many local black ministers attended Martin's first sermon at the church, among them the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, who congratulated him on his speech. The two became fast friends and often discussed life in general and the challenges of desegregation in particular. Then an incident changed Martin's life forever.
On the cold winter night of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old black seamstress who worked in a downtown Montgomery department store, boarded a bus for home and sat in the back with the other black passengers. A few stops later, she was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger who just boarded. She repeatedly refused, prompting the driver to call the police, who arrested her. In response to Mrs. Parks' courage, the town's black leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association and elected Martin as its leader. The first goal of the MIA was to boycott the city's bus system until public transportation laws were changed. The strike was long, bitter and violent, but eventually the city's white merchants began to complain that their businesses were suffering because of the strike, and the city responded by filing charges against Martin. While in court to appeal the charges, he learned that the U.S. Supreme Court had affirmed the decision by the Alabama Supreme Court that the local laws requiring segregation on buses were unconstitutional. The first civil rights battle was won, but for Martin it was the first of many more difficult ones. On November 29, 1959, he offered his resignation to the members of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as several months earlier he had been elected leader of a new organization called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He moved his family to Atlanta and began to establish a regional network of nonviolent organizations.
In April 1961 he coordinated the SCLC and other civil-rights organizations to take two busloads of white and black passengers through the South on a "freedom ride" for publicity reasons. In Virgina and North and South Carolina there were no incidents, but in Anniston, Alabama, the ride became a rolling horror when one bus was burned and its passengers beaten by an angry racist white mob. In Birmingham, angry mobs--with some policemen joining them--greeted the bus with more violence, which was broken up when state police intervened and stopped the chaos. The violence shook Martin and he decided to abandon the freedom rides before someone was killed, but the riders insisted they complete the ride to Montgomery, where they where greeted with more violence. In January 1963 Martin arrived in Birmingham with Ralph Abernathy to organize a freedom march aimed to end segregation. Despite an injunction issued by city authorities against the gathering, the protesters marched and were attacked by the police. Three months later another march was planned with the intent to "turn the other cheek" in response to the violence by the city's police force. As the marchers reached downtown Birmgingham, the police attacked the crowd with high-pressure fire hoses and attack dogs. This time, however, the incident was witnessed across the entire country, as many network TV crews were there and broadcasting live footage of unarmed marchers being blasted to the ground by high-pressure hoses and others being bitten and mauled by snarling attack dogs, and it sparked a national outrage.
The next day, more marchers repeated the walk and more policemen attacked with fire hoses and police dogs, leading to a total of 1,200 arrests. On the third day, Martin organized another march to the city jail. This time, when the marchers approached the police, none of them moved and some even let the marchers through to continue their march. The nonviolent strategy had worked--the strikes and boycotts were cutting deeply into the city merchants' revenues, and they called for negotiations and agreed with local black leaders to integrate lunch counters, fitting rooms, restrooms and drinking fountains within 90 days. Martin was then called for a rally in Washington, DC, near the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. Nearly 200,000 people stood in the intense heat listening to the speeches by the members and supporters of the NACCP. By the time Martin was called as the day's final speaker, the crowd was hot and tired. As he approached the podium, with his papers containing his prepared speech, he suddenly put them aside and decided to speak from the heart. He spoke of freedoms for blacks achieved and not yet achieved. He then spoke the words that echo throughout the world to this day: "I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.' I have that dream." By mid-October 1964 Martin had given 350 civil rights speeches and traveled 275,000 miles across the country and worked for 20 hours a day.
While in an Atlanta hospital after collapsing from exhaustion, his wife brought in his room a telegram notifying him that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 1, 1968, Martin traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to meet with two of his advisers, James Bevel and Jesse Jackson, to discuss organizing a march to Washington in support of a strike by Memphis' city's sanitation workers. In the late afternoon of April 4, he stepped out onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where he was staying to speak with Andrew Young. As he saw Jackson and waved to him for a moment, a gunshot rang through the air and Martin Luther King Jr. was hit in the neck and fell dead from a sniper's bullet. He was dead, but the struggle that he started to continue to bring peace and end the racial conflict in the USA continues to this day.- Marshal Josip Broz Tito, Communist President of Yugoslavia, and 1st Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement, was born as Josip Broz on May 7, 1892, in the village of Kumrovec, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Croatia). He was the seventh of 15 children born to Roman Catholic peasants. His blacksmith father, Franjo Broz, was a Croat, and his mother, Marija, was Slovene. After spending part of his childhood years with his maternal grandfather in Podsreda (present-day Slovenia), he returned to Kumrovec to attend school. He failed the first grade and left his formal education behind in 1905, to be apprenticed with a locksmith. As a journeyman locksmith he moved around the Empire.
The 18-year-old Broz joined the Croatian Social Democratic Party, and in 1913, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army. At the beginning of World War I, Broz, who had won a silver medal at an army fencing competition in May of 1914, was sent to Ruma. It was there he began to find himself and his life's calling, and was later arrested for anti-war propaganda and imprisoned. He was sent to Galicia to fight against the Russians and Serbs in 1915, and was seriously wounded by shellfire. In April 1915 his entire battalion was captured by the Russians.
The wounded Broz spent several months convalescing in a military hospital, where he learned to speak Russian. In the fall of 1916 he was sent to a work camp in the Ural mountains. While at the camp the first Russian Revolution of February 1917 (March, new style) occurred, culminating in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II on March 15th. Broz was arrested for organizing demonstrations among the prisoners of war in April 1917, but he escaped and joined the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd after the first revolution), engaging in street fighting during the attempted Bolshevik coup d'etat in Petrograd on July 16-17, 1917.
The Bolshevik insurrection failed to spark a wider revolt and was crushed by forces loyal to Aleksandr Kerensky, head of the provisional government. Broz fled for Finland to try to avoid arrest, but he was captured and sent to prison. He escaped from a train taking him to another work camp and in November joined the Red Army in Omsk, Siberia, fighting with the Red Guards in the first years of the Russian Civil War, pitting Reds against Whites (royalists). Broz applied for membership in the Russian Communist Party in the spring of 1918.
The Treaty of Versailles incorporated the territory of Croatia into the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and when he returned to his village in 1920, he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). Now employed as a metalworker, Broz became a union organizer. He was arrested after a Bosnian KPJ member assassinated the Yugoslav Minister of the Interior, which led to the outlawing of the KPJ. Broz switched his organizing activities to the underground, and in April 1927 he had ascended to the KPJ's Committee in Zagreb. As a KPJ committeeman he caught the attention of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Through Soviet influence, Broz was raised to the position of deputy of the Politburo of the KPJ Central Committee and named leader of the Croatian and Slovenian committees.
By 1934 parliamentary democracy in Yugoslavia had been replaced by a dictatorship under the Yugoslav king, and the KPJ remained banned. It was in this year, shortly after his release from his latest prison sentence, that Broz was named a full member of the KPJ Politburo and Central Committee. He adopted nomme de guerre "Tito" to use in his party work (possibly because "tito alba", the owl, a creature of the night, which also represents wisdom).
The newly nicknamed Tito went to the USSR in 1935, where he served in the Communist International's (Comintern) Balkan section. After a year with the Comintern, Tito, who apparently won the confidence of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, was named Secretary-General of the KPJ and returned to Yugoslavia to rebuild the party. Tito filled party posts with his hand-picked replacements. Eventually his position as Secretary-General of the KPJ was officially ratified by KPJ members at a secret meeting in Zagreb in 1940.
The Yugoslav government was pressured by Germany and Italy to join the Axis Powers. Initially it resisted, but finally threw in its lot with the Axis on March 25, 1941, under duress. On March 27th the government was overthrown by a pro-Western military coup in Belgrade, thus aborting Yugoslavia's alliance with the Axis. Ten days later, on April 6th, Yugoslavia was invaded by German, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops, and the Royal Yugoslav army was vanquished in less than two weeks, surrendering on April 17th.
When the Axis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, Stalin ordered the KPJ to offer no resistance due to the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact signed in August 1939. Despite ample warning, Stalin did not believe Adolf Hitler would attack the Soviet Union. What he did not know about the Axis incursion into Yugoslavia was that Hitler was securing his southern flank prior to the launching of Operation Barbarossa, the imminent invasion of the USSR. When Germany attacked the USSR in June 1941, it now became a duty for a communist to defend his "motherland" by fighting the Axis powers. Tito called a meeting of the Central committee, which named him Military Commander. The partisans' struggle began with Tito's call to arms for the people of Yugoslavia with the slogan, "Death to Fascism, Freedom to the People!"
Their prior organization as underground communist cells used to functioning in secrecy and with the strictest discipline meant that Tito's partisans were very well-organized and extremely effective. His aim was not only to liberate Yugoslavia but establish the KPJ in liberated areas. Revolutionary governments were established in areas the partisans liberated, which foreshadowed the administrative structure of postwar Yugoslavia.
The non-communists, mostly Serbian Chetniks, also fought against the Axis and had the support of both the British and the Yugoslav government in exile. However, they were not seen as effective as Tito's partisans, and the US and the UK switched their support to the partisans after they successfully fought off ferocious Axis attacks from January to June 1943. The partisans were officially recognized at the Tehran Conference, with the result that Allied arms, supplies and agents were parachuted behind Axis lines to assist them. Stilll, Tito refused to cooperate with the government-in-exile in London.
After the February 1945 Yalta Conference, at which the parameters of postwar Europe were agreed upon, Marshal Tito consolidated his power and that of the KPJ by purging his government of non-communists. Tito signed an agreement with the USSR on April 5, 1945, that permitted "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory". With the help of the Red Army, Tito's partisans won the war against the Axis and their collaborators. Tito then ordered foreign troops off of Yugoslav soil after V-E Day, and turned to eliminating domestic rivals, including members of the originally anti-fascist Chetnik movement (who eventually collaborated with the Germans to try to stop Tito) and the fascist Ustashe, who from the beginning had supported the Nazis as a vassal state in Croatia. Members of both organizations were summarily tried and executed en masse. General Dragoljub Draza Mihailovic, the Chetnik leader, was executed in March 1946.
Winning the rigged November 1945 elections, Tito imposed a new constitution on Yugoslavia. He further consolidated his power by organizing a strong army and a secret police force (the UDBA), both of which were personally loyal to him. In the postwar years Tito used the UDBA to eliminate Nazi collaborators. He also targeted Catholic priests and those who had opposed the communist-led war effort. The purge was eventually extended to include even those communists who did not agree with Tito.
Initially, the economy and society were collectivized in Soviet fashion, although he did not push for the collectivization of agriculture. Tito began to resent Stalin's constant meddling with his government and his suggestions on how Tito should run his economy. On his part, Stalin was unhappy with what he perceived as an independent foreign policy that was out of sync with Moscow. Stalin tried to depose Tito but would not go so far as to invade Yugoslavia, whose mountainous terrain had hamstrung Hitler's troops and was ideal territory for partisan attacks against an organized military force.
Tito denounced the Soviet policy of "... unconditional subordination of small socialist countries to one large socialist country." In response, Stalin had Tito and the KPJ expelled from the Cominform in June 1948. The USSR, through its Common Market-style organization called Comecon, boycotted Yugoslavia.
Through the vehicle of UDBA, Tito purged the KPJ of hardcore Stalinists, those that could not be "reeducated." He began decentralizing the economy, putting more power into the hands of workers' councils on the principle of workers' self-management. To keep himself in power and Yugoslavia independent of the USSR, he turned to the West for financial aid. The Greek civil war, pitting mostly Communists against the anti-Communist Greek government, sputtered out after Tito sealed off the border with Greece, effectively keeping arms, supplies and fighters from getting to the Communist rebels.
After the death of Stalin in March 5, 1953, Tito attempted a reconciliation with the USSR, meeting with new CPSU party boss Nikita Khrushchev in Belgrade in 1955. The meeting resulted in the Belgrade Declaration, which affirmed equality in relations between communist countries (although in the case of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, that equality was observed in the breach rather than the observance).
Freed to a degree of the Soviet threat, Tito's policy of "nonengagement" developed into a policy of "nonalignment." He overhauled his foreign policy to promote a non-aligned bloc between the West and the Warsaw Pact. Convening a meeting of 25 non-aligned states with India's Jawaharlal Nehru and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956, a third, alternative neutral bloc came into being. Tito traveled extensively in the developing world during the 1960s and 1970s to promote non-alignment.
On the domestic front, Tito maintained a balance among the different ethnic groups and nationalities of his multi-ethnic country. It ensured stability for as long as the KPJ and the secret police maintained control of Yugoslavia. Tito's system of "symetrical federalism," while predicated upon the principle of equality among the six republics and two autonomous provinces, in fact played the nationalities off against each other.
His ties with the West encouraged trade, which helped boost Yugoslavia's standard of living. Yugoslavia's beaches became a top tourist destination for Western European tourists, due to their beauty, the relative openness of Yugoslav society and the favorable exchange rate, which made an excursion to Yugoslavia very affordable. The economy of some of the Yugoslav provinces, particularly Croatia and Slovenia, thrived during the Cold War.
Marshal Tito was styled President-for-Life in 1974. While he allowed a freer exchange of people and ideas than most of the countries in the communist bloc, the major question of his regime remained would Yugoslavia survive the death of Tito. Without a strongman and the monopoly on power enjoyed by the KPJ, backed up by the army and the secret police, would Yugoslavia remain a country?
Josip Broz Tito died on May 4, 1980 in a hospital in Ljubljana, Slovenia, after being gravely ill for almost four months. He was the last of the World War II leaders to leave the world stage, having outlived his patron, then nemesis Stalin by almost 30 years. The country that he kept together did not outlive him by much more than a decade. Croatian nationalists won the first free elections in their republic in April and May 1990. The independence of Slovenia was proclaimed on June 25, 1991. Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina proclaimed their independence on October 8, 1991 and March 3, 1992 respectively, triggering civil wars in those republics, which left Yugoslavia a rump federation consisting only of Serbia and Montenegro.