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David Henry Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He was the youngest of three children to John and Synthia Thoreau. He studied at Harvard from 1822-1837, majoring in English. Thoreau was a companion of Ralph Aldo Emerson, who patronized him and introduced him to some of the most important writers and thinkers of his time. Thoreau's early publications were made possible initially only after pressure from Emerson, who suggested that his apprentice should write his observations in his journal. Thoreau's principles of non-violence and his opposition to the Mexican-American War was also inspired by Emerson. His essay "A Walk to Wachussett" was published in the January 1843 issue of The Boston Miscellany. Thoreau spent a few months later in 1843 in New York, tutoring Emerson's sons, and trying to be published.
On the 4-th of July, 1845, Thoreau embarked on his two-year experiment in simple living. He lived in a tiny self-built house on the shore of Walden Pond, on the land owned by Emerson on the outskirts of Concord. There Thoreau had an ideal environment for thinking and writing. However, he once spent a night in jail for refusing to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. During that time he published an elegy to his late brother, putting himself into debt for years, because he paid all expenses out of pocket. He left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847, and worked off his debt in a few years. His essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1849) was recognized by Lev Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, Martin Luther King, and many others, as an important influence on their respective careers.
Thoreau's writings evolved from his fascination with nature and natural way of life. His interest in natural history and travel narratives, like Darwin's and Bartram's, inspired many of his own works. His essays "Autumnal tints", "The Succession of Trees", "Wild Apples", and the recently published "Faith in a Seed" make Thoreau one of the early American environmentalist.
Thoreau suffered from tuberculosis, which he contracted in 1835. He also worked at his family's pencil factory for many years and seriously compromised his health by inhaling dust particles. He died on May 6, 1862, and was laid to rest in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. His three-million words journal was published in 1906, helping to build his modern reputation.- Writer
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Marcel Proust was a French intellectual, author and critic, best known for his seven-volume fiction 'In search of Lost Time'. He coined the term "involuntary memory", which became also known as "Proust effect" in modern psychology.
He was born Valentin Louis Georges Eugéne Marcel Proust, on July 10, 1871, in Paris, France. His father, Achille Proust, was a famous doctor. His mother, Jeanne Weil, was from a rich and cultured Jewish family. Proust's interests in art and literature were encouraged by his mother, who read and spoke English. He was fond of Carlyle, Emerson and John Ruskin, whose two works he also translated into French. From age 9 Proust suffered from severe allergy and asthma attacks, and eventually developed a chronic lung disease which caused his disability and affected his career and mobility. He was lucky to survive such a life threatening condition due to professional help from his doctor father. Proust's physical disability imposed serious restrictions on his lifestyle, and he expressed himself in writing. He was blessed with talent and imagination and also with a very large inheritance, that allowed him to write without any pressure. During the most years of his adult life Proust was confined to his cork-wood paneled bedroom, where he was attended mostly by his close friend, pianist and composer Reynaldo Hahn.
Proust's main work, 'A la recherche du temps perdu' was begun in 1909 and finished in 1922, just before the author's death. It also became known in English as 'In Search of Lost Time' (aka.. Remembrance of Things Past). The novel's life-like complexity and delicate fabric of language is influenced by his reading of Lev Tolstoy, especially by 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina', and it bears some structural and contentual resemblance of Tolstoy's major novels. It is spanning over 3000 pages in seven volumes and teeming with more than 2000 names. Proust's novel is set in the fictional town of Combray, near Paris, and covers all aspects of life of the upper class; nobility, sexuality, women, men, art and culture. It was praised from Graham Greene, W. Somerset Maugham and Ernest Hemingway, as being the greatest fiction of their time.
Marcel Proust died at age 51, of complications related to pneumonia and his chronic health condition, on November 18, 1922, and was laid to rest in Cimetiére du Pére-Lachaise, Paris, France. The town of Illiers, which became the model for imaginary town of Combray in the novel, was renamed Illiers-Combray in commemoration of the Proust's masterpiece.- Jack London was the best-selling, highest paid and most popular American author of his time.
He was born John Griffith Chaney, on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco. He was raised by his mother Flora Wellman and his stepfather John London (he didn't know who his father was until his adulthood). After graduation from a grammar school he worked 12 to 18 hours a day at a cannery. Jack had a special relationship with his black foster mother, Virginia (Jenny) Prentiss. She loaned him some money and in 1891 he bought a sloop and became an oyster pirate. A few months later he joined the California Fish Patrol. In 1893 he joined the crew of a sealing schooner, bound for Japan. His first story, "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan", based on his sailing experiences, was published in November of 1893. Still unemployed, he became a tramp and hoboed around the country. In 1894 he was arrested for vagrancy and spent a month in jail, where he was a witness to "awful abysses of human degradation." His entire life, after these events, became a race to erase the traumatizing memories of his childhood and youth.
He continued his self-education at the Oakland Public Library. Among his readings were works by Gustave Flaubert and Lev Tolstoy. In 1896 he was admitted to the University of California, but after a year was forced to leave due to financial reasons. In 1897 he went to the Canadian Yukon and joined the Klondike Gold Rush. There he experienced all the hardships of uncivilized life and suffered from--among other things--severe frostbite, scurvy, malaria and dysentery. This left his health seriously impaired. London's struggles for survival inspired "To Build a Fire" (1902), which is considered his best short story. Writing became his ticket out of poverty; a way, in his words, to "sell his brains". His first marriage to Bess Maddern began as a friendship, not love, and ended 3 years later, leaving her with two daughters. His second marriage to Charmian Kittrdge, an editor, lasted until his death.
"The Call of the Wild" (1903) was his biggest success. "The Sea-Wolf" (1904) was turned into the first full-length American movie. Later came "The Iron Heel" (1908), a premonition of the Orwellian world, and the autobiographical "Martin Eden" (1909). The highest-paid writer of his time, he earned over $2 million yet he was always broke. In 1905 he bought a ranch in California, where he designed the first concrete silo in the state. His books provided operating income. He once said, "I would write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate." His ecological approach and effort to adapt the ideas of Asian sustainable agriculture was ahead of his time. In 1913 his Big House was ruined by a devastating fire and Jack was financially and mentally hurt. He built a small cottage and made big plans, but he lived only 3 more years. His 1400-acre ranch is now a National Historic Landmark, named Jack London State Historic Park. The writer's cottage was preserved by his wife Charmian, who lived there until her death in 1955.
His changing views and philosophy were often misunderstood as he grew out of his own mistakes. At one time he wrote, "I have been more stimulated by [Friedrich Nietzsche] than by any other writer in the world." Later London disregarded the "superman" theory of Nietzsche, calling himself Nietschze's "intellectual enemy." His readings of Carl Jung contributed to his complex philosophy. His other influences ranged from Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson to Charles Darwin, Aldous Huxley and Karl Marx. While sympathizing with the Mexican revolution in "The Mexican", he wrote differently about it when he was sent to Mexico as a reporter in 1914. By age 40, somewhat disillusioned, he resigned from the Socialist party and from various clubs. During his last years London was in extreme pain, caused by complications from kidney failure (uremia is recorded on his death certificate). He was laid to rest at his ranch according to his will: "And roll over me a red boulder from the ruins of the Big House." - Henry James was born 15 April 1843, to a wealthy family. He was born in New York, New York USA. His parents were Henry James Sr. and Mary Robertson Walsh; He had one brother William James (January 11 1842-August 26 1910) and one sister Alice James. When Henry James was a young boy he would enjoy reading the classics of English, American, German, French, and Russian literature. Also when he was a kid he and his family would travel back and forth to England and the United States of America. Henry James educated in New York City, London, Paris and Geneva.
He tried to strive for a higher education then he decided it was not for him and writing was his calling in life. (When Henry James was at the age of 19 he briefly attended Harvard Law School, but preferred reading literature to studying law). When Henry James hit the age of 21 he decided to write his first novel, A Tragedy of error. From that point on he started to write. He went on to write 23 more novels in his lifetime (this is a short list of the book's he wrote the Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl, The Portrait of a Lady, The American, Washington Square, The Bostonians, and The Wings of the Dove). Henry James also was an extraordinarily productive on top of all of his novels he wrote he published articles an, biography, autobiography, and criticism, and wrote plays (one of them being Guy Domville), some of which were performed during his lifetime with moderate success. Henry James also wrote a whole lot of short stories for either the local news or just for fun. He often wrote for the New York tribune. Henry James was a key stone writer of his time (He was one of the foremost literary figures of his time, leaving us an enormous body of novels, 'tales' (short stories), literary and art criticism, autobiography and travel writing). Throughout his life he was in love with his cousin, Mary Temple, but later in life while he was in London he became homosexual, the young man he started to wright was at the age of 27 and Henry James was at the age of 56. He also wrote another guy named, Howard Sturgis. They started to write back and forth and they started to have more emotion in the letters. He also started to write a woman named Lucy Clifford; But Henry James never got married in his lifetime. Henry James brother William James died when Henry James was at the age of 67; Henry James had a stroke on Dec 2nd of 1915. His health started to decline from then. He died in London in Feb. 28th of 1916. When he died he was not only a citizen for the United States of America but also a British subject. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and his ashes are interred at Cambridge, Massachusetts. - Writer
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Charles Dickens' father was a clerk at the Naval Pay Office, and because of this the family had to move from place to place: Plymouth, London, Chatham. It was a large family and despite hard work, his father couldn't earn enough money. In 1823 he was arrested for debt and Charles had to start working in a factory, labeling bottles for six shillings a week. The economy eventually improved and Charles was able to go back to school. After leaving school, he started to work in a solicitor's office. He learned shorthand and started as a reporter working for the Morning Chronicle in courts of law and the House of Commons. In 1836 his first novel was published, "The Pickwick Papers". It was a success and was followed by more novels: "Oliver Twist" (1837), "Nicholas Nickleby" (1838-39) and "Barnaby Rudge" (1841). He traveled to America later that year and aroused the hostility of the American press by supporting the abolitionist (anti-slavery) movement. In 1858 he divorced his wife Catherine, who had borne him ten children. During the 1840s his social criticism became more radical and his comedy more savage: novels like "David Copperfield" (1849-50), "A Tale of Two Cities" (1959) and "Great Expectations" (1860-61) only increased his fame and respect. His last novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", was never completed and was later published posthumously.- Writer
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Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840 in Upper Bockhampton, Dorset, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), Tess (1979) and Maiden No More. He was married to Florence Emily Dugdale and Emma Lavinia Gifford. He died on 11 January 1928 in Dorchester, Dorset, England, UK.- Writer
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Mikhail Sholokhov was a Russian writer who received a Nobel prize for his epic novel 'Tikhiy Don'.
He was born in 1905 into a Cossack family of farmers in Kruzhilin, Veshenskaya, Rostov province in Southern Russia. His high school studies were interrupted by the Russian revolution and the Civil War, in which he fought on the side of the revolutionaries and joined the Red Army. From 1922-24 he lived in Moscow, where he attended "writers seminars" and published his early works: "A Test" and "The Birthmark". In 1924 he married Maria Gromoslavskaya in his native town, and the couple had four children.
His first book, "Donskie Rasskazy" (1925), exposed the bitter divide among the Russian people during and after the Civil War. His epic novel "And Quiet Flows the Don", published in parts during 1928-40, shows the turbulent life of Cossacks during the dramatic events of the Russian revolution and Civil War. The main character, Grigori Melekhov, was based on a historical prototype, 'Kharlampi Ermakov', a Cossack who opposed the Communists and was imprisoned and executed in 1929. Sholokhov's account of the conflict between Cossacks and Communists caused a suspension of publication in 1929, but he managed to get permission from Joseph Stalin to continue the publication. The novel had over 100 million copies in print, translated in 90+ languages worldwide.
Sholokhov was only 22 in 1928, when he delivered the massive manuscript of "Quiet Flows the Don" (book 1) to a Soviet publisher. It took him almost 14 years to complete the novel of four books in 1940. This led to a suggestion by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that Sholokhov used the work of another Cossack writer, Fyodor Kryukov (who died in 1920), for some parts of this epic work.
Sholokhov had a lifelong political career. He was a co-chairman of the Soviet Writers Union from the 1930s to his death in 1984. He traveled in western Europe on several occasions, and also accompanied Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to the US in 1959. He was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize for Literature for his novels and stories about the Cossacks in Russia, becoming the first and only officially sanctioned Soviet writer to win the honor.
Sholokhov took a hardline position against dissident writers, such as Boris Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Sinyavsky and Daniel. In 1965 he joined the side of Leonid Brezhnev in the restoration of the political image of Joseph Stalin. Such restoration was opposed by such figures as Andrei Sakharov, Valentin Kataev, Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy, Oleg Efremov, and Maya Plisetskaya. Sholokhov remained a hard-liner during the 60s and 70s. In late 70s he suffered from diabetes and had a stroke, and later developed a throat cancer. He was in denial of his medical condition. Shortly before his death he rejected the doctor's advise and interrupted his treatment at the Kremlin Hospital. Instead, he returned to his native village and died there on February 21, 1984.- Resat Nuri Güntekin was born on 25 November 1889 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]. Resat Nuri was a writer, known for Çalikusu (1966), Bir Dag Masali (1967) and Dudaktan kalbe (1951). Resat Nuri died on 7 December 1956 in London, England, UK.
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Born in New York City, raised in Arizona and California, educated at the University of Chicago, Harvard, Oxford and the Sorbonne, Susan Sontag constitutes a veritable challenge for any biographer. A novelist, philosopher, essayist, movie director and playwright, over the past thirty years she has been a controversial figure, too snobby for many of her critics, but always ready for a veritably "down to earth" engagement wherever and whenever human free expression is at stake (Vietnam, communist China, Bosnia).
Among her essays, which are by far her most complete aesthetic achievement, many are devoted to Film, either to single movies (like Bergman's "Persona", Godard's "Vivre sa vie", Syberberg's "Hitler, a Film from Germany", but also Chaplin's "The Dictator" and Kubrick's "Doctor Strangelove"), directors (Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, Leni Riefenstahl), or genders (Science Fiction). Her own films are deeply inspired by modernist style. The first two, Duet for Cannibals (1969) and Brother Carl (1971), both shot and produced in Sweden, bear clear influences of Bergman's reflections about the impossibility of human communication. Letter from Venice (1984) is an elegiac documentary of a mental tour of melancholia, while "Promised Lands" is a shocking documentary about Israel/Palestine that managed to outrage both the pro-Israelis and the pro-Palestinians at the time of its release in the mid 1970's. Since she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1975 (which she eventually overcame during several years of treatment), she has been involved in thinking and writing about the role of disease (TB, cancer, AIDS) in contemporary Western society.- Writer
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English writer, scholar and philologist, Tolkien's father was a bank manager in South Africa. Shortly before his father died (1896) his mother took him and his younger brother to his father's native village of Sarehole, near Birmingham, England. The landscapes and Nordic mythology of the Midlands may have been the source for Tolkien's fertile imagination to write about 'the Shire' and 'hobbits' in his later book the Hobbit (1937). After his mother's death in 1904 he was looked after by Father Francis Xavier Morgan a RC priest of the Congregation of the Oratory. Tolkien was educated at King Edward VI school in Birmingham. He studied linguistics at Exeter College, Oxford, and took his B.A. in 1915. In 1916 he fought in World War I with the Lancashire Fusiliers. It is believed that his experiences during the Battle of the Somne may have been fueled the darker side of his subsequent novels. Upon his return he worked as an assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary (1918-20) and took his M.A. in 1919. In 1920 he became a teacher in English at the University of Leeds. He then went on to Merton College in Oxford, where he became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon (1925-45) and Merton professor of English Language and Literature (1945-59). His first scholarly publication was an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925). He also wrote books on Chaucer (1934) and Beowulf (1937). In 1939 Tolkien gave the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland titled: "On Fairy-Stories". Tolkien will however be remembered most for his books the Hobbit (1937) and the Lord of the Rings (1954-55). The Hobbit began as a bedtime story for his children". He wrote Lord of the Rings over a period of about 14 years.
Tolkien also discussed parts of his novels with fellow Oxfordian and fantasy writer CS Lewis during their 'meetings'. He was trying to create a fantasy world so that he could explain how he had invented certain languages, and in doing so created 'Middle-earth'. However among his peers at Oxford his works were not well received as they were not considered 'scholarly'. It was after LOTR was published in paperback in the United States in 1965 that he developed his legendary cult following and also imitators. Tolkien was W. P. Ker lecturer at Glasgow University in 1953. In 1954 both the University of Liege and University College, Dublin, awarded him honorary doctorates. He received the CBE in 1972. He served as vice-president of the Philological Society and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made an honorary fellow of Exeter College. Despite the immense popularity of his books today Tolkien did not greatly benefit from their sales. His son Christopher Tolkien was able to publish some of his works posthumously after his manuscripts were found.- Writer
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Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, named David Poe Jr., and his mother, named Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, were touring actors. Both parents died in 1811, and Poe became an orphan before he was 3 years old. He was adopted by John Allan, a tobacco merchant in Richmond, Virginia, and was sent to a boarding school in London, England. He later attended the University of Virginia for one year, but dropped out and ran up massive gambling debts after spending all of his tuition money. John Allan broke off Poe's engagement to his fiancée Sarah Royster. Poe was heartbroken, traumatized, and broke. He had no way out and enlisted in the army in May of 1827. At the same time Poe published his first book, "Tamerlane and Other Poems" (1827). In 1829, he became a West Point cadet, but was dismissed after 6 months for disobedience. By that time he published "Al Aaraf" (1929) and "Poems by Edgar A. Poe" (1831), with the funds contributed by his fellow cadets. His early poetry, though written in the manner of Lord Byron, already shows the musical effects of his verses.
Poe moved in with his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, and her teenage daughter, Virginia Eliza Clemm, whom he married before she was 14 years old. He earned respect as a critic and writer. In his essays "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe formulated important literary theories. But his career suffered from his compulsive behavior and from alcoholism. He did produce, however, a constant flow of highly musical poems, of which "The Raven" (1845) and "The Bells" (1849) are the finest examples. Among his masterful short stories are "Ligeia" (1838), "The Fall of the House of Usher"(1839) and "The Masque of the Red Death". Following his own theory of creating "a certain unique or single effect", Poe invented the genre of the detective story. His works: "The Murder in the Rue Morgue" (1841) is probably the first detective story ever published.
Just when his life began to settle, Poe was devastated by the death of his wife Virginia in 1847. Two years later he returned to Richmond and resumed a relationship with his former fiancée, Sarah Royster, who, by that time, was a widow. But shortly after their happy reconciliation he was found unconscious on a street in Baltimore. Poe was taken to the Washington College Hospital where Doctor John Moran diagnosed "lesions on the brain" (the Doctor believed Poe was mugged). He died 4 days later, briefly coming in and out of consciousness, just to whisper his last words, "Lord, help my poor soul." The real cause of his death is still unknown and his death certificate has disappeared. Poe's critic and personal enemy, named Rufus Griswold, published an insulting obituary; later he visited Poe's home and took away all of the writer's manuscripts (which he never returned), and published his "Memoir" of Poe, in which he forged a madman image of the writer.
The name of the woman in Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" was used by Vladimir Nabokov in 'Lolita' as the name for Humbert's first love, Annabelle Leigh. Nabokov also used in 'Lolita' some phrases borrowed from the poem of Edgar Allan Poe. "The Fall of the House of Usher" was set to music by Claude Debussy as an opera. Sergei Rachmaninoff created a musical tribute to Poe by making his favorite poem "The Bells" into the eponymous Choral Symphony.- Music Artist
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Fleetwood Mac are a British-American rock band, formed in London in 1967. The band has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling bands. In 1998, select members of Fleetwood Mac were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.- William Faulkner, one of the 20th century's most gifted novelists, wrote for the movies in part because he could not make enough money from his novels and short stories to support his growing number of dependants. The author of such acclaimed novels as "The Sound and the Fury" and "Absalom, Absalom!", Faulkner received official screen credits for just six theatrical releases, five of which were with director Howard Hawks. Faulkner received the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1949 and he received two Pulitzer Prizes, for "A Fable" in '1955 and "The Reivers", which was published shortly before he died in 1962.
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Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1847, and gained fame for his novel "Dracula" about an aristocratic vampire in Transylvania. The sequel, "Dracula's Guest," was not published for 17 years after the publication of "Dracula," two years after Stoker's death. Stoker also wrote "The Mystery of the Sea" and "Famous Imposters." He was the stage manager for actor Sir Henry Irving and wrote "Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving," after Irving's death.- Nikola Tesla (28 June 1856 - 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree, gaining practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His alternating current (AC) induction motor and related poly-phase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the poly-phase system which that company eventually marketed.
Attempting to develop inventions he could patent and market, Tesla conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging. He also built a wireless-controlled boat, one of the first-ever exhibited. Tesla became well known as an inventor and demonstrated his achievements to celebrities and wealthy patrons at his lab, and was noted for his showmanship at public lectures. Throughout the 1890s, Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs. In 1893, he made pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices. Tesla tried to put these ideas to practical use in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project, an intercontinental wireless communication and power transmitter, but ran out of funding before he could complete it.
After Wardenclyffe, Tesla experimented with a series of inventions in the 1910s and 1920s with varying degrees of success. Having spent most of his money, Tesla lived in a series of New York hotels, leaving behind unpaid bills. He died in New York City in January 1943. Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity following his death, until 1960, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the SI unit of magnetic flux density the Tesla in his honor. There has been a resurgence in popular interest in Tesla since the 1990s. - Director
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Georges Méliès was a French illusionist and film director famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema.
Méliès was an especially prolific innovator in the use of special effects, popularizing such techniques as substitution splices, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color.
His films include A Trip to the Moon (1902) and An Impossible Voyage (1904), both involving strange, surreal journeys somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films.
Méliès died of cancer on 21 January 1938 at the age of 76.
In 2016, a Méliès film long thought lost, A Wager Between Two Magicians, or, Jealous of Myself (1904), was discovered in a Czechoslovak film archive.- Director
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Hal Hartley is an American filmmaker, writer, director, producer, and composer who has made twelve feature films since 1988. Popularly associated with the American independent filmmaking scene of the early nineties, he went on to write and direct such films as No Such Thing (2001) for United Artists and Fay Grim (2006) for HD Net Films. Hartley has won numerous awards at Cannes and Sundance, and has had his work shown in retrospectives around the world. He has also written and staged theatre, most notably his play Soon (1998) and the world premiere of Dutch composer Louis Andriessen's opera La Commedia (2008). He maintains his own production company, Possible Films, in New York City.
Hartley established himself as a noted and prolific filmmaker in the first decade of his career, making many films very quickly: The Unbelievable Truth (Nominated, 1990 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize), Trust (Winner, Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival), Surviving Desire (1991), Simple Men (Official Selection, 1992 Cannes Film Festival), Amateur (Official Selection, 1994 Cannes Director's Fortnight; Winner, 1994 Tokyo International Film Festival Young Filmmakers Award), Flirt (1995), and Henry Fool (Winner, 1998 Cannes Film Festival Best Screenplay).
In 1998 Hartley shot his first digital video feature, an eschatological comedy called The Book of Life. He continued with a monster movie, No Such Thing (Official Selection, 2001 Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard), and a futuristic dystopia, The Girl from Monday (Winner, 2005 Sitges International Film Festival "Premi Noves Visions" Award). In 2004 he moved to Berlin, where he made Henry Fool's sequel, Fay Grim (Official Selection, 2006 Toronto International Film Festival; Winner, 2006 RiverRun International Film Festival Audience Choice Award). The distribution for his most recent release, Meanwhile (2012), was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Hartley has made dozens of short films, many of which are available in anthology form as Possible Films: Short Works by Hal Hartley 1994-2004 (2004) and PF2 (2010). There have been retrospectives of his work in the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Korea, Argentina, and Poland. He is an alumnus of the American Academy in Berlin. He was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the Republic of France in 1996, and taught filmmaking at Harvard University from 2001 to 2004.
Hartley was born on November 3, 1959 to Eileen (nee Flynn) and Harold Hartley. He grew up in Lindenhurst, Long Island, in a working class suburb an hour from New York City with two older brothers and a younger sister. He graduated from Lindenhurst High School in 1977 and enrolled at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he took a formative elective in Super 8 filmmaking. He returned home after the 1977-1978 academic year to earn more money for schooling, eventually matriculating at the State University of New York at Purchase Film School in September 1980. He graduated in May 1984, and after a year of various production assistant jobs, settled into a position at a commercial production company where his boss helped finance his first feature, The Unbelievable Truth (1989).- Music Artist
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Born in New York City, Tupac grew up primarily in Harlem. In 1984, his family moved to Baltimore, Maryland where he became good friends with Jada Pinkett Smith. His family moved again in 1988 to Oakland, California. His first breakthrough in music came in 1991 as a member of the group Digital Underground. In the same year he received individual recognition for his album "2Pacalypse Now," but this album was also the beginning of his notoriety as a leading figure of the gangster permutation of hip-hop, with references to cop killing and sexual violence. His solo movie career also began in this year with Juice (1992), and in 1992 he co-starred with Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice (1993).
However, law confrontations were soon to come: A 15-day jail term in 1994 for assault and battery and, in 1995, a conviction for sexual assault of a female fan. After serving 8 months pending an appeal, Shakur was released from jail.- Writer
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John le Carré was born in Poole, Dorset in England on 19 October, 1931. He went to Sherborne School and, later, studied German literature for one year at University of Bern. Later, he went to Lincoln College, Oxford and graduated in Modern Languages. From 1956 to 1958, he taught at Eton and from 1959 to 1964, he was a member of the British Foreign Service as second secretary at British Embassy in Bonn, and then, as Politician Consul in Hamburg. His first novel was written in 1961 and, by the time of his death in December 2020, he had published nearly 30. His books took many prizes, and inspired numerous films.- Writer
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Jesse Armstrong was born on 13 December 1970 in Oswestry, Shropshire, England, UK. He is a writer and producer, known for In the Loop (2009), Four Lions (2010) and Fresh Meat (2011).- Stefan Heym was born on 10 April 1913 in Chemnitz, Germany. He was a writer, known for Collin (1981), Hostages (1943) and Lenz oder die Freiheit (1986). He was married to Inge Wüste-Heym and Gertrude Gelbin. He died on 16 December 2001 in Jerusalem, Israel.
- Lester Bookbinder is known for Dire Straits: Skateaway (1980), Dire Straits: Tunnel of Love (1980) and Dire Straits: Romeo and Juliet (1981).
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Abbas Kiarostami was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1940. He graduated from university with a degree in fine arts before starting work as a graphic designer. He then joined the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, where he started a film section, and this started his career as a filmmaker at the age of 30. Since then he has made many movies and has become one of the most important figures in contemporary Iranian film. He is also a major figure in the arts world, and has had numerous gallery exhibitions of his photography, short films and poetry. He is an iconic figure for what he has done, and he has achieved it all by believing in the arts and the creativity of his mind.- Writer
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Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born to a middle-class family in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, Argentina, on June 14, 1928. Disgusted by the corrupt Argentine military dictatorship, Guevara became a dedicated Marxist while in his teens. As a student he vowed to devote his life to revolutionary causes, and in 1953 he received a medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires. He left Argentina later that year to take part in a Communist revolt in Guatemala. There he adopted his revolutionary nickname and nom de guerre of "Che", the local slang for "pal." When the revolution in Guatemala failed the following year, Che fled to Mexico where he was introduced to another Communist revolutionary in exile, Fidel Castro.
Joining Castro's July 26 Movement, named after the date of Castro's aborted 1953 revolution in Cuba, Guevara sailed with Castro and over 80 guerrillas to Cuba, where they landed on December 2, 1956, bent on overthrowing Gen. Fulgencio Batista's government. The invasion force was decimated by a combination of fierce attacks by government troops and air strikes, and Castro, Guevara and about 10 others fled to the Sierra Maestra mountains of southern Cuba and established a base there. In July 1957 Che was assigned command of half of Castro's forces and given the rank of Comandante, a title he shared only with Castro himself. For the next year and a half he led his insurgents against government forces in the province of Las Villas, aided by the growing hatred by the population of Batista's corrupt and brutal government. Castro's forces were bolstered by help in both recruits from and material assistance by the local population. Che's attack against and decisive defeat of government forces in Santa Clara in December 1958 sealed the fate of Batista's crumbling government. He fled into exile on January 1, 1959, and Castro's troops marched unopposed into Havana a week later. After Castro assumed power, Che became one of his most trusted advisers and a leading international revolutionary and was appointed Minister of Agriculture. In 1960 he wrote a book titled "Guerilla Warfare," a manual for Third World insurgents, as part of his plan to spread Communism throughout the world. Che resigned his government post in Cuba in 1965 and traveled widely to Africa and other insurgent hot spots in the world, including the Belgian Congo, where he organized local Communists in revolts against the colonial government and trained Cuban contingents there. The training included taking courses in French, it was the language of Belgium, the Congo's colonial power, and was also spoken by many locals. Guevara wanted to make sure his men were able to effectively communicate with the locals in their own language.
In November 1966 he surfaced in Bolivia to organize a revolt by local Communist insurgents. However, the "revolution" there didn't garner much support from the Bolivian peasantry, most of whom were poorly uneducated (or not educated at all) and spoke mostly local Indian dialects rather than Spanish, which made communication with them difficult. They also preferred to support the Bolivian government rather than a group of mostly foreign revolutionaries they neither knew nor trusted, and they often reported the locations and numbers of Che's forces to Bolivian military authorities. After a long and unsuccessful campaign during which Che's men were relentlessly pursued and whittled down by government troops, his "revolt" in Bolivia came to an abrupt end. On October 7, 1967, he and the surviving members of his group were ambushed and captured by government soldiers. Two days later, on October 9, Che was executed by a Bolivian firing squad, supposedly acting under orders from the CIA, which was training the Bolivian army.- Mustafa was born in 1881 in Salonica, then an Ottoman Turkish city, in modern day Greece. His father, Ali Riza, a customs official-turned-lumber merchant, died when Mustafa was still a boy. His mother, Zubeyde, a devout and strong-willed woman, raised him and his younger sister by herself. First enrolled in a traditional Islamic religious school, he soon switched to a modern school. In 1893, he entered a military high school where his mathematics teacher gave him the second name Kemal (meaning perfection in Turkish) in recognition of young Mustafa's superior achievement. He was thereafter known as Mustafa Kemal.
In 1905, Mustafa Kemal graduated from the War Academy in Istanbul with the rank of Staff Captain. Posted in Damascus, Syria, then a part of the Ottoman Empire, he started with several colleagues a clandestine society called "Homeland and Freedom" to fight against the Sultan's despotism. In 1908, he helped the group of officers who toppled the Sultan. Mustafa Kemal's career flourished as he won his heroism in the far corners of the Ottoman Empire during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12 as well as the Balakan Wars of 1913 in which he saw action in Albania and Tripoli, Libya. He also briefly served as a staff officer in Salonica and Istanbul and as a military attache in Sofia, Bulgaria.
In October, 1914, the Ottoman Empire offically entered World War I alongside Germany and Austria as part of the Central Powers fighting the Allies of Great Britian, France, Italy and Russia. In 1915, when the Dardanelles/Galipoli campaign was launched, Mustafa Kemal, recently premoted to Colonel, became a national hero by winning successive victories against the landing British French and ANZAC armies, pinning them down at their beacheads, which finally forced the invaders to evacuate Galipoli in January 1916. Promoted to General later that year, at age 35, he liberated two major provinces in eastern Turkey against the Russian armies. In the next two years, from 1917 to 1918, he served as commander of several Ottoman armies in Palestine, Aleppo, and elsewhere, achieving another major victory by stopping the British advance at Aleppo just before the war-weary Turkish armies agreed to an armistice with the British on October 31, 1918 which ended World War I in the Middle East. As a result of the Ottoman Empire's defeat, the Turks lost all of their Middle East territories with the exception of the traditional Turkish area around the region of Asia Minor.
On May 19, 1919, Mustafa Kemal Pasha landed in the Black Sea port of Samsun to start the Greco-Turkish War, (known to the Turks as the War of Independence.) In defiance of the Sultan's government, he rallied a liberation army in Anatolia and convened the Congress of Erzurum and Sivas which established the basis for the new national effort under his leadership. On April 23, 1920, the Grand National Assembly was inaugurated. Mustafa Kemal Pasha was elected as its President. Fighting on many fronts, he led his forces to victory against rebels and the invading Greek armies. Following the Turkish triumph at the two major battles at Izunu in Western Turkey, the Grand National Assembly conferred on Mustafa Kemal Pasha the title of Commander-in-Chief with the rank of Marshal. At the end of August 1922, the Turkish armies won their ultimate victory. Within a few weeks, the Turkish mainland was completely liberated, an armistice with Greece was signed, and the rule of the Ottoman dynasty was abolished.
In July 1923, the national government signed the Lausanne Treaty with Great Britain, France, Greece, Italy, and others countries which regonized the new country of Turkey. In mid-October, Ankara became the capital of the new Turkish State. On October 29, the Republic was proclaimed and Mustafa Kemal Pasha was unanimously elected President of the Republic. Kemal married Latife Usakligil in early 1923. The marriage ended in divorce in 1925.
The account of Kemal Atatürk's fifteen year Presidency (1923-1938) is a saga of dramatic modernization. With indefatigable determination, he created a new political and legal system based on a Swiss Civil Code, abolished the Islamic Caliphate and made both government and education secular, gave equal rights to women, changed the Turkish language by transfering the written language from the Arabic script to the Roman alphabet, and the attire from Islamic to Western, and advanced the arts and the sciences, agriculture and industry.
In 1934, when the surname law was adopted, the national parliament gave him the name "Atatürk" (Turkish for Father of the Turks). A heavy drinker most of his life, Atatürk developed liver and kidney problems durng the last year of his life. He died on November 10, 1938, at age 57. The "national liberator" and the "Father of modern Turkey" was dead. But his legacy to his people and to the world endures to this very day. - Writer
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Master of comedy novelist Pelham (Plum) Grenville Wodehouse was born on October 15, 1881, in Guilford, Surrey, England. He died in hospital in Southampton, New York, on Valentine's day (February 14) 1975, from a heart attack after a long illness at age 93. In that time he managed to write close to 200 novels, short stories, plays, song lyrics and so on.
At the time of his birth, Plum's mother was visiting her sister in England, but after only a few weeks she and young Plum returned to Hong Kong, where his father was a magistrate. At an early age he was sent to school in Britain--Dulwich College in London.
At age 14, he moved with his parents in to what they would call "the old house." After completing school, he spent two years as a banker at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, but he soon switched jobs to the old Globe newspaper as a sports reporter and columnist on "By the way..." About that time he started to write his own little stories. At first he wrote school novels about life in the famous universities in England (for example, "The White Feather") and mainly for a boys magazine called "The Captain", but soon he developed a talent for comic dialogue and started to put his talents to that instead.
Success was just around the corner, and by 1910 he had established himself in such a way that he could spend time between residences in the US and France. It was also at about this time he acquired his obsession with golf, a sport around which many of his short stories circle--even though his handicap never came down below 18. In a few years he was reaching millions of readers in dozens of countries.
Plum met Ethel, an American widow who became the woman of his life, in 1913 and they married in 1914. World War II caught Plum in his newly-purchased home in Le Touquet in France, having tea with his wife and some friends. He was captured by German forces and put in a prison camp. He was treated well and got the means to keep writing his books. Joseph Goebbels, it was revealed later, understood what a big fish they had caught and lured Plum into giving some brief, humorous appearances on German radio. Being the political fool he was, Plum fell into the trap. The broadcasts, which were supposed to be heard in the US only, were redirected to Britain, in a cunning scheme to annoy British authorities. As word of the broadcasts spread, back in Britain Plum's readers and publisher went berserk. They wanted him charged with treason. However, it was obvious he had been tricked and as the war ended, he returned to America, where he became a citizen in 1955.
Hollywood claimed Wodehouse, but it soon became apparent that all they wanted was his name on the posters and ads. Still, his popularity increased to such a degree that in 1975, a few weeks before his death, he was forgiven his wartime mistakes by the British establishment and was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen. At the time of his knighthood he was in poor health and couldn't attend the ceremony. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, a devout Wodehouse fan, offered to go to the US to personally present the knighthood.
In his final years, Plum was in and out of the hospital with pneumonia, heart problems and lung failures. Seeking comfort, as always, in his typewriter, Sir Plum kept writing until the end. His last work is the unfinished "Sunset at Blandings", of which nine chapters were written before he died in 1975.
Lady Ethel lived until 1984. They had no mutual children, only from Ethel's daughter from her previous marriage, Leonora, who Plum adopted and who died during surgery in 1942, devastating Plum to his core.- Writer
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Gore Vidal was born Eugene Louis Vidal in 1925 in West Point, New York, to Nina (Gore) and West Point aeronautics instructor and aviation pioneer Eugene Luther Vidal. The Vidals endured a rocky marriage divorcing ten years after Gore's birth. Young Gore spent much of his childhood with his blind grandfather, Senator T.P. Gore of Oklahoma. Vidal would later become the confidant of Jacqueline Kennedy when Jackie's mother married his former stepfather, Hugh D. Auchincloss. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1943, Gore joined the US Army Reserves. Some of his Army experiences inspired his first novel, Williwaw, which was published when he was just 19. He dedicated the novel to J.T., a deceased prep-school friend. Subsequent novels would prominently feature gay male characters, and Gore found soon found his books had staying power on bestseller lists. In 1960, he unsuccessfully ran for Congress, backed by celebrity supporters like Paul Newman & Vidal's ex-fiancé Joanne Woodward. Another unsuccessful foray into politics would occur in 1982 when he ran for governor of California. In addition to being an accomplished writer, he is also a novice actor. His biggest roles to date have been in Gattaca (1997), Bob Roberts (1992), and With Honors (1994).- Writer
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Daniel Sloss is an internationally acclaimed Scottish comedian, who has toured in 50 countries, released 2 comedy specials for Netflix ("DARK" and "Jigsaw", 2018) and "Daniel Sloss: X" on HBO (USA & Canada, 2019). He has appeared on 'Conan' multiple times, as well as Comedy Central's 'Drunk History', 'Comedy Roast Battles', 'Sunday Night at the Palladium' and 'The Graham Norton Show'.
'Jigsaw' has become somewhat notorious as it has been cited in over 120,000 breakups, 300 divorces (fans even bring their Decree Nisis along to gigs for Daniel to autograph)
Still only 30 years old Daniel has created 11 solo touring shows and has performed 6 solo New York seasons off-Broadway, 11 solo sold out seasons in London's West End including at the legendary London Palladium. His extensive global tours receive rave reviews, and the 2018-2019 extended tour of "Daniel Sloss: X" spanned a remarkable 300 performances worldwide across 40 countries including USA, Canada, Australasia, all over Europea, Japan, China and Moscow (in a 3,000+ seat arena, becoming Russia's biggest ever English-language comedy show).
For the past 12 years Daniel has been one of the biggest ticket sellers at the world's biggest arts festival, the Edinburgh Fringe. His debut book 'Everyone You Hate is Going to Die' will be published around the globe on 10 October 2021 (delayed by Covid-19) on PRH imprints Knopf and William Heinemann- Actor
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George Denis Patrick Carlin was born and raised in Manhattan, New York City, to Mary (Bearey), a secretary, and Patrick John Carlin, an advertising manager for The Sun; they had met while working in marketing. His father was from Donegal, Ireland, and his mother was Irish-American. His parents divorced when he was two months old, and he was raised by his mother. The long hours the mother worked left the young George by himself for long hours every day, providing him (in his own words), the time he needed to think about various subjects, listen to radio, and practice his impersonations, that where acclaimed by his mother and coworkers since an early age. Carlin started out as a conventional comedian and had achieved a fair degree of success as a Bill Cosby style raconteur in nightclubs and on TV until the late 1960s, when he radically overhauled his persona. His routines became more insightful, introducing more serious subjects. As he aged, he became more cynic and bitter, unintentionally changing his stage persona again in a radical way throughout the '90s. This new George Carlin, usually referred to as the late George Carlin, is one of the most acclaimed and enjoyed by the public and critics. Carlin's forte is Lenny Bruce-style social and political commentary, spiced with nihilistic observations about people and religion peppered with black humor. He is also noted for his masterful knowledge and use of the English language. Carlin's notorious "Seven Dirty Words" comedy routine was part of a radio censorship case that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978.- Actor
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Cornel Wilde was born Kornel Lajos Weisz on October 13, 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary (now part of Slovakia) to a Jewish family. In 1920, he immigrated to New York City with his parents, Rayna (Vid) and Vojtech Béla Weisz, and elder sister, Edith. His family Anglicized their names. Kornel took the name Cornelius Louis Wilde. He spent much of his youth traveling in Europe, developing a continental flair as well as an affinity for languages. He received a scholarship for medical school, but turned it down in favor of his new love, the theatre.
A natural athlete and a champion fencer with the U.S. Olympic fencing team, he quit the team just prior to the 1936 Berlin Olympics in order to take a role in a play. In 1937, he married Marjorie Heintzen (later known as Patricia Knight), and they both shaved a few years off their ages in order to get work, Wilde thereafter claiming publicly he was born in New York in 1915 while continuing to list his correct place and year of birth on government documents.
Shortening his name to Cornel Wilde for the stage, he appeared in the Broadway hit "Having a Wonderful Time", but it wasn't until he was hired in the dual capacities of fencing choreographer and actor (Tybalt) in Laurence Olivier's 1940 Broadway production of "Romeo and Juliet" that Hollywood spotted him. He played a few minor roles before leaping to fame and an Oscar nomination as Frederic Chopin in A Song to Remember (1945). He spent the balance of the 1940s in romantic, and often swashbuckling, leading roles.
During the 1950s, his star dimmed a little, and aside from an occasional blockbuster like The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), he settled mainly into adventure films. A growing interest in directing led him to form his own production company with the goal of directing his own films. Several of his ventures into film noir in this period, both his own and those of other directors, are quite interesting (The Big Combo (1955) and Storm Fear (1955), for example). He produced, directed and starred in The Naked Prey (1965), a tour-de-force adventure drama that brought him real acclaim as a director. His later films were of varying quality, and he ended his career in near-cameos in minor adventure films. He died of leukemia in 1989, three days after his 77th birthday, leaving behind an unpublished autobiography, "The Wilde Life".- Actor
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Richard Dawkins was born on 26 March 1941 in Nairobi, Kenya. He is an actor and writer, known for Doctor Who (2005), Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008) and Intersect (2020). He has been married to Lalla Ward since September 1992. He was previously married to Marian Dawkins and Eve Barham.- Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Kiev Province, now the Ukraine, to Polish parents Apollo Korzeniowski and Ewa Bobrowska. His father was a political activist and he and his family were exiled after he was suspected of involvement with revolutionary activities. Conrad had no friends as a child and rarely associated with boys or girls. His mother had always been a sickly person and died of tuberculosis in 1865. Conrad's father sent him to live with his uncle and pursue his education in France. Conrad's father died in 1869, also of tuberculosis. Conrad became an officer on British ships and spent two decades on various ships. Conrad was inspired to write "Heart of Darkness" after voyaging to Congo in 1890. In 1894, Conrad published his first novel and in 1896 he married Jessie George, an on-again off-again girlfriend. Conrad had few friends in adulthood, mainly fellow authors such as Stephen Crane and Henry James. Conrad died of a heart attack in 1924.
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Paolo Taviani studied liberal arts at the University of Pisa, becoming interested in the cinema after seeing Roberto Rossellini's Paisan (1946). After writing and directing short films and plays with his brother Vittorio, he made his first feature in 1962. The brothers have continued to work together ever since, with each directing alternate scenes with the other watching but never interfering.- Oktay Rifat was born on 10 June 1914 in Trapezund, Ottoman Empire [now Trabzon, Turkey]. He was a writer, known for Çil Horoz (1988). He was married to Sabiha. He died on 18 April 1988 in Istanbul, Turkey.
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Major Latin-American author of novels and short stories, a central figure in the so-called magical realism movement in Latin American literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. Studied law and journalism in Bogotá and Cartagena. He began his career as a journalist in 1948, was a foreign correspondent in Europe during the late 1950s, Cuba and N.Y. early 1960s, and a screenwriter, journalist and publicist in Mexico City during the 1960s. During the 1980s he moved to Mexico when restrictions where imposed on his continued traveling due to his left-view political views.- Producer
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Howard Allan Stern was born on January 12, 1954, in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, to Rae (Schiffman), an inhalation therapist, and Bernard Stern, who co-owned a cartoon/commercial production studio. His grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Stern's first radio experience was at Boston University, where he volunteered at the college radio station. Along with several other students, he created an on-air show called the King Schmaltz Bagel Hour, a takeoff on the popular King Biscuit Flour Hour. Predicting his penchant for controversy, the show was canceled after its first broadcast, which included the comedy sketch "Name That Sin," a game show where contestants confessed their worst sins. Stern graduated in 1976 with a 3.8 grade-point average and a bachelor's degree in communications. During his first paying radio gig, at an understaffed 3,000-watt station in Briarcliff Manor, New York, "It dawned on me that I would never make it as a straight deejay," Stern told James S. Kunen in an interview for People (10/22/84), "so I started to mess around. It was unheard-of to mix talking on the phone with playing music. It was outrageous, It was blasphemy."