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Vaira Vikis-Freibergs was born on 1 December 1937 in Riga, Latvia. was the 6th President of Latvia and first female President of Latvia. She was elected President of Latvia in 1999 and reelected in 2003. She has been succeeded by Valdis Zatlers, who was elected President of Latvia on 31 May 2007.

At the end of 1944, as Soviet occupation of Latvia begun, Vike’s parents escaped to Germany. There she received her first education in Latvian primary school at refugee camp in Lübeck, Germany. Then her family moved to French Morocco in 1949. In Morocco she attended French primary school at Daourat hydroelectric dam village where she learned French. Vike then went on to attend Collège de jeunes filles de Mers-Sultan in Casablanca. In 1954 her family moved to Toronto, Canada. There she completed Grade 13 and received her high school diploma. In 1958 she was accepted as a student at the University of Toronto. She firstly achieved a BA in psychology in 1958 and followed it with an MA in 1960. while working full time in Canadian Bank of Commerce as a teller. In 1957–1960 she worked part time as a supervisor in Branksome Hall Boarding School for Girls. In 1958, being fluent in English, French, Latvian, Spanish and German, she worked as a Spanish translator and next year went on to work as a Spanish teacher for grades 12 and 13 at Ontario Ladies’ College. Upon leaving the University of Toronto, Vike became a clinical psychologist at the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital in late 1960. She left in 1961 to resume her education at the McGill University in Montreal where she earned her PhD in experimental psychology, leaving the University in 1965.

In 1998, Ms Vike-Freiberga received an invitation she couldn’t refuse – to head the new Latvian Institute, established to raise the profile of Latvia and the Latvians around the world.

She returned to a country facing many problems in its efforts to build a Western-style democracy and market economy. In a meteoric rise in her new career as a politician, Ms Vike-Freiberga was elected president within a year. Vaira Vike-Freiberga was succeeded on 8 July 2007 by Valdis Zatlers, who was elected President of Latvia on 31 May 2007. On 18 July 2007 she founded the company VVF Consulting together with her husband. She is now on her second, four-year term as head of state.

As recently as 2000, there seemed to be little realistic prospect of Latvia’s early entry into either the EU or Nato. Latvia’s progress was uneven. A high level of corruption was causing concern in the West. There were lingering doubts over the country’s commitment to democracy, as well as deep anger among Jewish organisations at the country’s apparent dismissal of the crimes committed by those Latvians who collaborated with the Nazis in the war.

Latvia’s discriminatory policies towards its Russian minority – 30% of the population – seemed vindictive.

Latvia is now a considerably different country. It is politically stable, democratic and enjoying steady economic growth. The country has carried out a wide-ranging programme of economic and military reform.

That has been accompanied by a crackdown on corruption and efforts to bring Latvian legislation up to European standards. Even relations with Russia have begun to emerge from the deep-freeze.

Ms Vike-Freiberga has overcome strong “Eurosceptic” sentiment to make membership of the EU a reality.

  

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Vilasrao Dadoji Deshmukh (born May 26, 1945) is an Indian politician from the economically backward Marathwada region of the state of Maharashtra. He is the Chief Minister of Maharashtra (Term: October 2004 – October 2009). He is from the Congress party. He is the father of Bollywood actor Ritesh Deshmukh.

He graduated in Science (B.Sc) from M.E.S Abasaheb Garware College (Pune University), Arts ( B.A) and Law ( L.LB.) from the ILS Law College (Pune University) and started social activities in his early youth. He took a keen interest in drought relief work. He was elected as Director on Osmanabad District Central Cooperative Bank and also on Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank in 1979.his family members are;wife-Vaishalitai Deshmukh and three son i.e. Amit, Ritiesh & Dhiraj.

He has been a minister in various governments in Maharashtra from 1982 to 1995 holding portfolios of revenue, cooperation, agriculture, home, industries and education.

From April 1995 to October 17, 1999, when he was not in Government, he kept himself engaged in expansion of the Manjara Co-op.Sugar Mill. The Mill is computerised and well equipped with a wireless system. It established a world record in 1994-95 and in 1997-98 by crushing the highest quantity of sugarcane. It has won 34 awards on national and international level for excellence in production and management.

He became the Chief Minister of Maharashtra in 1999 but had to step down in January 2003 and make way for Sushilkumar Shinde, a prominent Dalit face of Congress, following factionalism in the state unit of the party.

  

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Vishal-Shekhar are a music directing duo (Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani) for Bollywood films. They have had a number of successes including Salaam Namaste and Dus and Bluffmaster.

The duo rose in prominence when they composed the score for the film Jhankaar Beats, which included the hit song tu aashiqui hai. Their efforts paid off when they won the Filmfare RD Burman Award for New Music Talent for Jhankaar Beats. The music for the film Musafir became very popular with youths. They combined techno music with Indian sounds. The score of the film included the music hits Saaqi and Door Se Paas. 2005 was a good year for the duo as they composed the scores for three hit films: Salaam Namaste and Dus and Bluffmaster.

They are now judges on the Zee TV show, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007. They also directed the music of Tara Rum Pum, a hit.

Vishal Dadlani is also the vocalist of Mumbai-based electronic band Pentagram, and was a sometime-VJ at Channel V.

Shekhar is Gujarati and Vishal is Sindhi. Vishal is a vegeterian.Vishal-Shekhar were recently seen judging a popular music talent hunt show on Zee TV.

Shekhar is married and has a daughter named Bipasha. Vishal is still very much a part of the Indian rock band Pentagram. Shekhar is a trained classical singer and has a sound base of Indian music. Their music is thus a combination of Indian classical with western rock influence brought by Vishal.

  

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Vidya Malvade Biography

Vidya Malvalde is an Indian actress, mainly working in Bollywood. Her husband, is Capt Bagga, a pilot. He passed away when “The Alliance Air Boeing “ , when his plane collided with a building at Patna.. She studied Law and worked as an air hostess.She started her career with Vikram Bhatt’s Inteha (2003), which flopped at the box office. After a string of unsuccessful movies and several advertisments, she will act opposite Shahrukh Khan in Yash Chopra’s Chak De India (2007).

  

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Vivek Oberoi, son of veteran actor Suresh Oberoi was born on the 3rd of September,1976, in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. He attended Mayo College, Ajmer and Mithibai college in Mumbai.. At an actors’ workshop in London he was spotted by none other than the director of NYU who (unsurprisingly) whisked Vivek off to New York, where he completed his Masters Degree in film acting. Back home in India Vivek worked as scriptwriter and bought his first car with the money he made from that.

Oberoi made his debut in Ram Gopal Varma’s Company. Quite an unusual entrance for a debutant in Bollywood, because the norm for young actors is to play good lover boys till their place in Filmdom is secure. Not Vivek. Apparently, Ram Gopal Varma was having second thoughts about casting Vivek in Company because he thought Vivek looked too cute for a gangster – and told him so. Vivek, not to be outdone, went to the slums of Mumbai and did his homework and a couple of weeks later barged into Varma’s office dressed as Chandu the gangster, swung his feet up on the table, and landed the contract pronto.

From there the road went uphill. Vivek’s immaculate performance in Company – in which he starred opposite Bollywood Big Bad Boy Ajay Devgan, Miss Bolly Manisha Koirala and the granddaddy of Malayalam Cinema, Mohanlal – was more than enough to get the media singing Oberoi’s praises. Next in line was the psycho-thriller Road (2002) (opposite Company co-star and co-newcomer Antra Mali), Dum (2003) (which sank without a trace – opposite Diya Mirza) and the next big catch, Saathiya (2002), opposite Rani Mukherjee.

He recently got engaged to, and then broke up with longtime girlfriend Gurpreet, and is currently linked with Rani Mukherjee and Aishwarya Rai. Recently he got himself into the headlines for a public outburst (i.e. press conference) against Salman Khan.

  

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Vladimir Ilich ULyanov was born in Simbirsk on the Volga River on 22 April 1870 into a well educated family. He excelled at school and went on to study law. At univerdity, he was exposed to radical thinking, and his views were also influenced by the executin of his elder brother, a member of a revolutionary group.

Expelled from university for his radical policies, Lenin completed his law degree as an external student in 1891. He moved to St Petersburg and became a professional revolutionary. Like many of his contemporaries, he was arrested and exiled to Siberia, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. After his Siberian exile, Lenin-the pseudonym he adopted in 1901-spent most of the subsequent decade and a half in western Europe, where he emerged as a prominent figure in the international revolutionary movement and became the leader of the ‘Bolshevik’ faction of the Russian Social Democratic Worker’s Party.

In 1917, exhausted by World War One, Russia was ripe for change. Assisted by the Germans, who hoped that he would undermine the Russian war effort, Lenin returned home and started working against the provisional government which had overthrown the tsarist regime. He eventually led what was soon to be known as the October Revolution, but was effectively a coup d’etat. Almost three years of civil war followed. The Bolsheviks were victorious and assumed total control of the country. During this period of revolution, war and famine, Lenin demonstrated a chilling disregard for the sufferings of his fellow countrymen and mercilessly crushed any opposition.

Although Lenin was ruthless he was also pragmatic. When his efforts to transform the Russian economy to a socialist model stalled, he introduced the New Economic Policy, where a measure of private enterprise was still permitted, a policy that continued for several years after his death. In 1918 Lenin survived an assassination attempt. His long term health was affected, and in 1922 he suffered a stroke from which he never really recovered. In his declining years, he worried about the bureaucratisation of the regime and also expressed concern over the increasing power of stalin. Lenin diedon 24 January 1924. His corpse was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square.

  

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Dr. Verghese Kurien is better known as the "father of the white revolution" in India. He is also called as the Milkman of India. Dr. Varghese Kurien was the architect behind the success of the largest dairy development program in the world, christened as Operation Flood. He was the chairman of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF) and his name was synonymous with the Amul brand.

Born on November 26, 1921 in Kozhikode, Kerala, Dr. Verghese Kurien graduated with Physics from Loyola College, Madras in 1940. Subsequently, he did his B.E.(Mechanical) from the Madras University and went to USA on a government scholarship to do his Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University. In between, he completed special studies in engineering at the Tata Iron and Steel Company Institute at Jamshedpur, Bihar, in February 1946 and underwent nine months of specialized training in dairy engineering at the National Dairy Research Institute of Bangalore.

Dr. Verghese Kurien returned from America in 1948 and joined the Dairy Department of the Government of India. In May 1949, he was posted as Dairy Engineer at the Government Research Creamery, a small milk-powder factory, in Anand, Gujarat. Around this time, the newly formed cooperative dairy, Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union Limited ((KDCMPUL), was engaged in battle of survival with the privately owned Polson Dairy, which was a giant in its field. Enthused by the challenge, Dr. Verghese Kurien left his government job and volunteered to help Shri Tribhuvandas Patel, the Chairman of KDCMPUL, to set up a processing plant. This led to the birth of AMUL and the rest is history.

In 1965, the then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, created the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) under the leadership of Dr. Verghese Kurien to replicate the success story of Amul throughout the country. In 1973, Dr. Kurien set up GCMMF (Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation) to market the products produced by the dairies. Under Dr. Kurien’s stewardship India became the as the largest producer of milk in the world.

During his illustrious career, Dr. Verghese Kurien won many accolades and awards. These include: Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership (1963), Padma Shri (1965), Padma Bhushan (1966), Krishi Ratna Award (1986), Wateler Peace Prize Award of Carnegie Foundation (1986), World Food Prize Laureate (1989), International Person of the Year(1993) by the World Dairy Expo, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, and Padma Vibhushan (1999).

  

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Vidya Balan, born on 1st January 1978, the Tamilian Iyer girl from Palghat grew up in Mumbai, did her early years of education at St. Antony’s School and later graduated in Sociology from St. Xavier’s College. While she was doing her MA from Mumbai University, she got an offer in a Malayalam film titled ‘Chakram’ with Mohanlal. Unfortunately, the film was shelved mid-way because of some issues between the director and Mohanlal. Then Vidya had to wait for a few more years to make her movie debut.

In 1998, this elegant beauty started her career as a model in Surf Excel advertisement. Later she appeared in more than 25 ad films like Ponds, Bajaj etc. Before getting her big break in Bollywood, she acted in a few music videos with Euphoria, Shubha Mudgal, Pankaj Udhas etc. She was also seen in TV serials such as Ashok Pandit’s ‘Hanste Khelte’ and Ektaa Kapoor’s ‘Hum Paanch’ as well as a Bengali movie ‘Bhalo Theko’ with actor Joy Sengupta. She won the best actress award, ‘Anand Lok Puraskar’ for the movie in Kolkata.

In 2005, she debuted in Bollywood with Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Parineeta, directed by Pradeep Sarkar. It was nothing short of a challenge for her to capture the grace, elegance and subtle nuances of her character Lolita. She succeeded in making the role perfect with her natural beauty and talent. But it was not an easy feat for Vidya to get her Bollywood break. She had to go through 40 screen tests and 17 make-up shoots before she was chosen for the lead role in this film. After that, she read Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s book on which the movie was based and saw the 1953 celluloid version of ‘Parineeta’ by filmmaker Bimal Roy. She has a number of future projects lined up for release.

Vidya has a very traditional Indian look in contrast to most of today’s Bollywood starlets. She is associated with AmFar and Hale House, a home for children born with HIV and those affected by drug addiction. She also involves herself with the Harvard AIDS Institute, by hosting forums and participating in events throughout the year. No wonder that Vidya Balan is one of the most talked about names in Bollywood today.

  

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Vijay Mallya is the Chairman of the United Beverages (UB) Group. He recently launched a new domestic airline called Kingfisher Airline which is making great waves. Vijay Mallya is famous for his flamboyant and flashy lifestyle.

Vijay Mallya is the son of a famous industrialist Vittal Mallya. He assumed the Chairman of the UB Group in 1983 and took the company to great heights. Under his dynamic leadership the group has grown into a multi-national conglomerate of over sixty companies. During this process United Beverages acquired several companies abroad. The UB Group has diversified business interests ranging from alcoholic beverages to life sciences, engineering, agriculture, chemicals, information technology and leisure.

In 2005, Vijay Mallya established Kingfisher Airlines. In a short span of time Kingfisher Airline has carved a niche for itself. It was the first airline in India to operate with all new aircrafts. Kingfisher Airlines is also the first Indian airline to order the Airbus A380.

Vijay Mallya has other interests too apart from business. He has won trophies in professional car racing circuits and is a keen yachtsman and aviator. Vijay Mallya has also won numerous trophies in horse racing including several prestigious Derbies.

In 2000, Vijay Mallya entered politics superceded Subramaniam Swamy as the president of Janata Party. Presently, he is a Rajya Sabha M.P.

  

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Vanessa Redgrave CBE, born on 30 January 1937, is an Academy Award winning English actress of stage, screen and television. A member of the world-renowned Redgrave family, she is the mother of Hollywood actresses Joely Richardson and the late Natasha Richardson. Vanessa made her stage debut in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances in London’s West End and Broadway winning both Tony and Olivier Awards. She has also starred in more than 80 films; including Mary, Queen of Scots, Isadora, Mission Impossible and Mrs Dalloway. Widely considered to be one of the greatest actresses of her generation, Vanessa has recieved the Oscar, two Emmy’s, a Tony, two Golden Globe’s and the Screen Actors Guild award and was proclaimed by Tennessee Williams to be ‘the greatest living actress of our times.’ Vanessa Redgrave will be the recipient of the 2010 Bafta Fellowship Award for outstanding contribution to film.

Later films include The Bostonians (1983), The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1991), Howard’s End (1992), Mission Impossible (1996), Wilde (1997), Mrs Dalloway (1998), and The Cradle Will Rock (1999). Other work includes The Gathering Storm (2002) for television, and in 2003 she won a Tony Award for her performance in a revival of Long Day’s Journey into Night. She is also well known for her active support of left-wing causes. In 1999 she turned down the opportunity to become a dame, refusing to accept the honour from a government run by Tony Blair.

From 1971 to 1986, she had a long-term relationship with actor Timothy Dalton. On 31 December 2006, Redgrave married Franco Nero.[5] Her daughter, Tony Award-winning actress, Natasha Richardson died on 18 March 2009, following a skiing-related traumatic brain injury.

  

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Entertainer and pianist, born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen, and in Vienna and Berlin. He made his debut as a pianist in 1926, and as a revue actor in 1933.

From 1940 he worked in the USA for radio, television, and theatre, and performed with leading symphony orchestras on worldwide tours from 1956. He was best known for his comedy sketches combining music and narrative. With Robert Sherman he wrote the books My Favorite Intermissions (1971) and Victor Borge’s My Favorite Comedies in Music (1980).

  

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Vanessa Lynn Williams was born on March 18 1963, to Milton and Helen Williams. Milton and Helen both held advanced degrees in music so they were perfect for getting Vanessa started in piano and the French horn. But it was her beautiful and silky voice that came naturally to her. It became such a passion that she pursued singing in Syracuse University as a Theater Arts major. As Vanessa’s beauty and graciousness matured, she started doing beauty pageants.

Before she knew it, she was crowned Miss New York. She had to go on to represent New York in the Miss America pageant. So on to the pageant she went, not knowing if she could do the same thing again. But Vanessa proved everyone wrong and won the crown. As a matter of fact, she went on the become the first African American to ever win the Miss America crown. She had the world at her feet. Everybody wanted to interview her. But it was toward the end of her reign that her past had caught up with her. Vanessa had taken pictures for Pent.house Magazine in her pre-Miss America days and they were threatening to reveal them. So she resigned as Miss America.

When all had seemed hopeless, she picked up her chin and strutted off to ‘move on’ avenue. A year later, Vanessa was doing backup vocals on George Clinton’s “Hey Good Looking” and “Do Fries Go with That Shake?”. Although the songs weren’t to widely known, Vanessa caught the attention of Wing/Murcury Record executives. After a couple of meetings, they signed Vanessa to a recording contract. While working up a storm on her debut album, she married and later divorced her now ex-manager Ramon Hervey.

Throughout the marriage, they produced three lovely children (Melanie, Jillian and Devin). By 1988 Vanessa’s debut album The Right Stuff was released. It won her a new image. A more playful, funky, sexy Vanessa. People were starting to appreciate her more. And as luck would have it, her single ‘Dreaming’ had hit #1 on the charts. It was a good year for her and she was back on top.

In 1991 her second album, The Comfort Zone was released. Everyone’s favorite song was another ballad “Save the Best For Last” which remained #1 on the charts for five weeks. In the meantime, Vanessa decided to test her acting skills in small roles. They weren’t very big parts but they did prove to be useful. Vanessa released her third album Sweetest Days and it went platinum almost instantly. During that time she was featured in the Broadway musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman. Because audiences adored her, they recorded a new cast version of the CD.

On the big screen, Vanessa finally got a major role opposite Arnold Schwarznegger in the action/suspense movie Eraser. This opened up a new area of acting for her. Soon she would be gaining more attention by getting roles in Hoodlum, Soul Food, and the TV miniseries The Odyssey. But it was Dance With Me that her fans enjoyed the most. It probably had something to do with the tailor made role that had her in cute clothes and dancing her butt off. It showcased the Vanessa that we were all used to. The one that entertained us all. Somehow she made time in her busy schedule to record and drop her fourth album, Next. Very recently, she married former Los Angeles Laker basketball player Rick Fox.

  

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Veronica Varekova hails from the Czech Republic, and was born in June 1977. She came into the spotlight when she became a model in 1996. Not only does she have the beauty to have graced the covers of several fashion magazines, but she also has the brains – Veronica has a degree in Psychology and Education, and is trilingual.

She has graced the covers of magazines such as Marie Claire, Harpers & Queen and Cosmopolitan, but men would probably most remember her for her work in the Victoria’s Secret catalog, stealing the spotlight from fellow goddesses Tyra Banks and Laetitia Casta.

Her work for Victoria’s Secret must have prepped her for swimsuit modeling, as she has appeared in the coveted Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition for four consecutive years, including the 2001 edition (along with Yamila Diaz-Rahi and Elsa Benitez).

If you haven’t seen Veronica showing off her amazing form, then you must have seen her flaunt her face and hair as a spokesperson for Nivea and Pantene. She has also done advertisements for Guess? and Chanel.

After a two-year hiatus from doing the SI Swimsuit Issue, Veronica Varekova made quite a comeback as the cover model of the magazine in 2004. The magazine also features Ana Beatriz Barros, Noemie Lenoir, Carolyn Murphy, and Molly Sims.

  

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Vivica Fox was born on July 30th 1964, and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is the youngest of four children, growing up with her sister and two brothers. She attended the Golden West College in Huntington Beach, California, and graduated with an Associate Art degree in Social Sciences. She is a talented actress who got her big break on the Hollywood scene with her feature film debut opposite of Will Smith, in the blockbuster hit Independence Day. She portrayed Jasmine DuBrow, the sexy and heroic girlfriend of the pilot hero played by Smith. By the way, the dynamic and sexy couple won the MTV Award for Best Kiss.

Her credits started to grow from then on. Following her performance in ID4, Fox starred with Jada Pinkett-Smith, Queen Latifah, and Blair Underwood in the dramatic action feature Set it Off. She played the role of an ambitious bank teller turn no-holds-barred bank robber.

In the summer of 1997, Vivica starred in the heavy cast movie Batman and Robin. She co-starred opposite Arnold Schwarzeneger, Uma Thurman and George Clooney. She showed off her talent playing the dangerously seductive character Ms. B Haven. That same year, she also appeared as one of three sisters in the family drama Soul Food, co-starring Vanessa Williams and Nia Long. That role lead her to receive an MTV Movie and Image Award Nomination for Best Actress.

The ABC special Arsenio was yet another project the talented Fox took part in. Previous television appearances include a primetime slot in the program Out All Night, as well as landing many other guest starring roles in series such as: Like Living Single, Family Matters, Matlock, Beverly Hills 90210, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and China Beach. She also held a recurring role on The Young and the Restless.

The summer of 1998 was a very eventful one for Vivica’s film career. In her most recent film project Why Do Fools Fall In Love, Vivica co-stars with Larenz Tate, Halle Berry and Lela Rochon in a movie about the Frankie Lymon Story. Idle Hands was next on her list, where she played a druid priestess hunting down the evil forces in a small town. She also co-starred with British actress Helen Mirren, as well as Molly Ringwald, Katie Holmes, and Barry Watson, as Miss Gold, in the feature about three students holding an unpopular teacher hostage, Teaching Mrs. Tingle.

As you can see, this Indiana native is on a role, with growing success and innate talent. She is in her second year starring on the Fox Television sitcom Getting Personal, with Duane Martin and Jon Cryer. Playing the role of Robyn Buckley, she is a woman who always gets involved with her co-worker’s personal and professional lives, a perfect match for today’s busy young professionals

  

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Valeria was born and grew up in the neighbourhood of Managua in Nicaragua, it is a country in the Heart of Central America, with two oceans, spectacular volcanoes, huge lakes, lagoons, rivers, archaeological treasures and delicious food. Valeria is in her 4th year at University studying Systems Engineering, her ambition is to obtain a position in a computer company, gain experience in order to form her own business, and have a beautiful family.

Hobbies are: Volleyball, Investigating the Internet, Dance especially with the Latin Rhythm, Modelling, and she enjoys visiting with family and friends. Her personal motto is “To maintain success with much dedication and discipline”.

  

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Russian-born U.S. electronic engineer, inventor of iconoscope and kinescope (the first transmitter and receiver for TV), and the father of modern television. Most people think of television as a development of the mid-20th century. But as early as 1929 Russian inventor Vladimir Kosma Zworykin was demonstrating a system with all the features of modern picture tubes. Born in Murom, 200 miles east of Moscow, Zworykin was a son of a wealthy merchant, and had an aptitude for science and technology.

Zworykin at age nine started spending summers as an apprentice aboard the boats his father operated on the Oka River. He eagerly helped repair electrical equipment, and it soon became apparent that he was more interested in electricity than anything nautical. At the Imperial Institute of Technology, Boris Rosing, a professor in charge of laboratory projects, became friendly with the young student engineer and let him work on some of his private projects. Rosing was trying to transmit pictures by wire in his own physics laboratory.

He and his young assistant experimented with a primitive cathode-ray tube (CRT), developed in Germany by Karl Ferdinand Braun. In 1910 Rosing exhibited a television system, using a mechanical scanner in the transmitter and the electronic Braun tube in the receiver.

The system was primitive but it was more electronic than mechanical. Rosing didn’t have much better luck with his CRT-based television system, though it won a gold medal from the Russian Technical Society in 1912. The real importance of the work was that it left his student Zworykin with a deep interest in the possibilities of the CRT and electron scanning for television systems.

The lure of theoretical physics drew Zworykin to Paris after he graduated the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology with honors and a scholarship in electrical engineering in 1912. There he studied X-rays under Paul Langevin at the Collegè de France (1912-1914), in Paris. Then he went to Berlin to continue studies in physics. When the First World War broke out in August 1914, he was evicted from Germany as an enemy alien and returned to Russia.

Zworykin served during World War I in the Russian Signal Corps. In 1916 Zworykin married Tatiana Vasilieff (later they were divorced) and they had two children. Rosing disappeared during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Soon Zworykin also decided to leave Russia for the United States. He emigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a naturalized citizen in 1924.

Just after his arrival to the U.S.A. (1919-1920) Zworykin was a bookkeeper and a financial agent of Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. In 1920, Zworykin joined Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh to work on the development of radio tubes and photocells. While there, he earned his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Pittsburgh and wrote his dissertation on improving photoelectric cells. Zworykin was determined to build an electronic imaging tube.

After several years of work, he managed to devise a photosensitive plate consisting of tiny droplets of potassium hydride deposited on an insulating substrate of oxidized aluminum. Light falling on the potassium hydride droplets knocked electrons out of them, leaving them with a positive charge. Focusing a image on the plate through a lens left an electrical pattern on the plate that matched the scene.

To read out the pattern of electrical charges, Zworykin took electron gun technology from the CRT and used it to scan across the photosensitive plate. When the electron beam hit a positively charged potassium hydride droplet, the current in the beam increased. The increase in current could be amplified and transmitted.

But electronic television’s development captured his attention. Based on pioneering efforts of Westinghouse in radio, he tried to convince the company to do research in television. Turning down an offer from Warner Brothers, Zworykin worked nights, fashioning his own crude television system.

Zworykin’s 1923 patent

In December 1923 he applied for a patent for the iconoscope, which produced pictures by scanning images. Zworykin called his tube the iconoscope (literally “a viewer of icons”). However, after demonstrating his new system to Westinghouse executives, they decided not to pursue his research. Zworykin describes his 1923 demonstration as “scarcely impressive”.

Westinghouse officials were not prepared to base an investment in television on such a flimsy system. The companys suggestion was that Zworykin devote his time to more practical endeavours. Undeterred, Zworykin continued in his off hours to perfect his system.

He was so persistent that the laboratory guard was instructed to send him home a 2:00 in the morning if the lights of the laboratory were still on. During this time Zworykin managed to develop a more sophisticated picture tube called the kinescope which serves as the basis of the television display tubes in use today. Within the year he applied for a patent for the kinescope, which reproduced those scanned images on a picture tube.

These two inventions (iconoscope as a transmitter and kinescope as a receiver) formed the first all-electronic television system. Early conceptions of television focused on a mechanical scanning system with motors and large rotating disks. This type of television generally produced a picture only about one inch square. It was heavy, bulky equipment and certainly not practical for home use. All future television systems would be based on Zworykin’s 1923 patent. He also developed a colour-television system, for which he received a patent in 1928.

On November 18, 1929, at convention of radio engineers in Pittsburgh, Zworykin demonstrated a television receiver containing his ‘kinescope,’ a cathode-ray tube. Zworykin demonstrated his all-electronic television system a full 10 years before it was introduced to the public at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Zworykin’s all electronic television system demonstrated the limitations of the mechanical television system. In attendance was David Sarnoff, president of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). He was greatly impressed by the television presentation and decided to hire Zworykin to develop his television system for RCA.

Zworykin was transferred by Westinghouse to work for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in Camden, New Jersey, as the new director of the Electronic Research Laboratory. RCA owned most of Westinghouse at that time and had just bought the Jenkin’s Television Company, makers of mechanical television systems, in order to receive their patents.

Teamed with David Sarnoff at RCA, Zworykin was leading the development of electronic television. When Zworykin started at RCA his system was scanning 50 lines. Experimental broadcasts started in 1930 first using a mechanical camera transmitting at 120 lines. By 1933 a complete electronic system was being employed with a resolution of 240 lines. Reportedly, Zworykin told RCA president David Sarnoff that it would take $100,000 to perfect television. Sarnoff later told the New York Times, “RCA spent $50 million before we ever got a penny back from TV.”

During the first half of 1932, an experimental television system had been used in New York using a studio scanning apparatus. This consisted of a mechanical disk, flying-spot type, for an image of 120 lines. Even for small areas of coverage and for 120 lines, the resulting signal amplitude was unsatisfactory. In the Camden system, an iconoscope was used as the pick-up device. The use of the iconoscope permitted transmission of greater detail, outdoor pick-up, and wider areas of coverage in the studio. Experience indicated that it provided a new degree of flexibility in pick-up performance, thereby removing one of the most technical obstacles to television.

After many years of research and development an all-electronic television system emerged from the laboratory in 1933 for actual field tests. These tests were carried out at Camden (New Jersey), using a video transmitter and connected to it by a coaxial line. Iconoscopes (television cameras) were used to pick up scenes both in the studio and out-of-doors.

A scanning pattern of 240 lines made it possible to obtain a picture with good definition, but as the frame frequency was 24 cycles, without interlacing , flicker was quite noticeable. The following year (1934) the number of lines was increased to 343, and an interlaced pattern having a field frequency of 60 cycles and a repetition rate of 30 frames per second was adopted. The results of these tests were so satisfactory that it was decided to continue them in New York City, the site of earlier RCA tests using a mechanical scanner. The advantage of the new location was that transmission studies under more nearly the conditions encountered in actual broadcasts were possible, in particular, with respect to noise and reflection from buildings.

This move was made in 1935, tests followed the following year. The New York studios were located in Radio City. The transmitter was installed in one of the upper floors of the Empire State Building, with the antenna on the mooring mast, 1285 feet above street level. Two links interconnect the studio and transmitter. One of these is an underground coaxial cable approximately a mile in length. An ultra-high-frequency radio relay link operating at 177 megacycles serves as an alternative for interconnecting the two units. In order to increase the flexibility of the system, and to permit outdoor and indoor pickup from remote points, a mobile unit consisting of a pickup truck and transmitter, which operated at 177 megacycles, was placed in service in 1938.

Approximately one hundred receivers were built and located at various points within a radius of 50 miles of the transmitter. These, together with field strength measurements, gave detailed information as to the effect of the terrain on the received pictures. They also facilitated obtaining data on the reaction of a great variety of people to different types of programs.

Zworykin was not alone. By 1934 two British electronic firms, EMI and Marconi, created an all-electronic television system. They used the Orthicon camera tube invented by an American company, RCA. This electronic system was officially adopted by the BBC in 1936. It consisted of 405 scanning lines, changing at twenty five frames per second.

The further improvements allegedly used an imaging section which was similar to Philo Farnsworth’s patented dissector. Patent litigation forced RCA to start paying Farnsworth royalties. Both Farnsworth and Zworykin, working separately, made great advances towards commercial television and affordable TV sets. By 1935, both were broadcasting intermittently, using all-electronic systems. But Baird Television was first in 1928 with an all mechanical television system.

At the time, very few people had television sets and the viewing experience was less than impressive. The small audience of viewers was watching a blurry picture on a 2 or 3 inch screen. The future of television looked bleak, but the competition for dominance in television broadcasting was hot.

By 1939, RCA and Zworykin were ready for regular programming and they kicked it all off by televising the World’s Fair in New York. Franklin Roosevelt, present at the creation of RCA and a frequent speaker on radio, became the first president to be seen on television when the fair’s opening ceremonies were telecast ten days later. Things moved quickly, and in 1941 the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) decided it was time to write guidelines for television transmission in the United States. Five months later, all 22 of the nation’s television stations converted to the new electronic standards.

In the early years, during the Great Depression, television sets were too expensive for most of the public. When prices eventually dropped, the U.S. was knee-deep in World War Two. But when a new age dawned after the war, the time was right for the Golden Age of Television. Unfortunately, everyone had to watch it in black and white.

Zworykin’s television system provided the impetus for the development of modern television as an entertainment and education medium. Although ultimately replaced by the orthicon and image orthicon ubes, the iconoscope was the basis for further important developments in television cameras. The modern television picture tube is basically Zworykin’s kinescope.

In later life Zworykin lamented the way television had been abused to titillate and trivialize subjects rather than for the educational and cultural enrichment of audiences. “I hate what they’ve done to my child… I would never let my own children watch it.” – Zworykin on his feelings about watching television.

His other developments in electronics include an early form of the electric eye and innovations in the electron microscope. His work led to text readers, electric eyes used in security systems and garage door openers, and electronically-controlled missiles and vehicles. Working with James Hiller, Zworykin also began to apply television technology to microscopy, which led to RCA’s development of the electron microscope in 1939. In 1930, Zworykin’s experiments with G.A. Morton on infrared rays led to the development of night-seeing devices.

His electron image tube, sensitive to infrared light, was the basis for the sniperscope and the snooperscope, devices first used in World War II for seeing in the dark. His secondary-emission multiplier was used in the scintillation counter, one of the most sensitive of radiation detectors.

During World War II he advised several defense organizations, and immediately after the war, he worked with Princeton professor John von Neumann to develop computer applications for accurate weather forecasting. In 1957 Zworykin patented a device that used ultraviolet light and television to throw a colour picture of living cells on a screen. This paved the way for new biological investigations to take place.

Iconoscope, model 1846, was used in a television guided bomb during the latter part of WW2.

The GB-4 guided bomb

GB-4 being dropped from a B-17

RCA engineer showing 1846 iconoscope camera used in bomb

Army officer piloting GB-4 to it’s target

Insides of the camera, iconoscope 1846 outlined in red can be seen at left with deflection yoke and lens

Front view of camera with sketch of 1846 iconoscope tube it used

General view of the camera used in the bomb

Insides the camera – iconoscope can be seen

In 1951 Dr. Vladimir Zworykin married physician, Dr. Katherine Polevitzky. She had recently become a widow of the former mayor of Murmansk, Russia. It was the second marriage for both. Dr. Zworykin had known Katherine at least 20 years before their marriage. In 1933 he and 3 friends, including Loren Jones had purchased an open cockpit biplane and obtained his pilots license. He flew over Taunton Lakes and took aerial photographs for a future lakefront home he had planned. This home was very close to the residence of two other Russian refugees, Katherine and Igor Polevitzky.

Dr. Zworykin, Melbourne, December, 1951

Katherine and Vladimir also visited Australia during this worldwide tour and Dr. Zworykin spoke at Melbourne University on the new Vidicon. They both attended medical lectures as well while on their honeymoon.

Television Monitor showing a Melbourne streetscape, Melbourne, December, 1951

Close up of television monitor showing a Melbourne streetscape, Melbourne, December, 1951

After retiring from RCA in 1954, he was named an honorary vice president of RCA and its technical consultant. He was also appointed director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University) in New York and worked on electronically based medical applications.

Zworykin received numerous awards related to these inventions, especially television. They included the Institute of Radio Engineers’ Morris Liebmann Memorial prize in 1934; the American Institute of Electrical Engineers’ highest honor in 1952, and the Edison Medal. In 1967 the National Academy of Sciences awarded him the National Medal of Science for his contributions to the instruments of science, engineering, and television and for his stimulation of the application of engineering to medicine.

He was also founder-president of the International Federation for Medical Electronics and Biological Engineering, a recipient of the Faraday Medal from Great Britain (1965) and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Science (1966), and a member of the U.S. National Hall of Fame from 1977.

Zworykin died in Princeton, New Jersey, 29 July 1982.

Iconoscope was the first electronic camera tube

The iconoscope is a type of camera tube that is no longer used, since it is not as sensitive as the image orthicon and its images are subject to uneven shading and flare. But it is well suited to introduce the concepts of electron image storage and scanning in simple form. The iconoscope is housed in a dipper- shaped, vacuum-tight glass envelope. Within the wide end is a flat sheet of mica. A uniform metallic coating, called the signal plate, is placed on the rear surface of this sheet, away from the image. The front surface of the mica is covered with a mosaic composed of many hundreds of thousands of tiny globules of silver.

During the manufacture of the tube the mosaic is treated with cesium vapour and oxygen, so that each globule has a surface of the oxides of silver and cesium. This combination of elements provides a surface from which electrons are readily liberated, by the photoelectric effect, when light falls on it. Since the globules are insulated from each other and from the signal plate by the mica, the loss of electrons under illumination causes the globules to assume and hold a positive charge, the charge on each globule being proportional to the strength of the illumination falling on it and to the time it has been illuminated.

When an optical image is focussed on the treated mosaic, the whole surface assumes a distribution of positive charge that corresponds to the distribution of light in the image. The amount of charge at each point on the surface steadily increases, if the optical image is maintained, until the scanning spot passes over the globule of silver at that point.

The scanning spot of the iconoscope is formed by a narrow beam of electrons, shot out of an electron gun in the side arm of the tube. On its way to the mosaic, this beam passes within two sets of electromagnet coils. Currents like those of this figure are passed through these coils, causing the beam to be deflected horizontally at a rapid rate and vertically at a relatively slower rate. The extent of the horizontal motion is adjusted from top to bottom of the mosaic, so that the pattern traced out by the electron beam on the mosaic is a rectangular pattern.

As each globule is passed over by the beam, it undergoes a sudden change in electrical potential, the amount of the change being proportional to the light falling on it. The change in potential of the globule is transferred through the mica support to the signal plate behind it, the globule and plate forming in effect the plates of an electrical capacitor.

Thus, as the beam passes in succession over the globules lying along a given scanning line, the signal plate assumes a succession of voltages (the picture signal) that match the corresponding succession of light values along that line. The signal plate is connected to an amplifier, external to the iconoscope, that increases the strength of the picture signal.

The phenomenon of charge storage, by which the magnitude of the electrical image is continually increased between successive scannings of each line, is of the utmost significance in television technology. The spirally apertured rotating Nipkow disk (and other non-storage television pickup devices) employs only the light that is present at a given point in the image at the instant the scanning spot passes over that point. Since in modern television the area of the scanning spot is only about one two-hundred-thousandth of the area of the scanning pattern, only this small fraction of the light of the image can be used. But when the image charge is stored in increasing amount for the full interval between successive scannings of a given point, the accumulated charge is then theoretically increased by about 200,000 times the single charge that can be accumulated during the time the beam moves through its own width.

One unusual thing about the 1847 is that there is no direct connection between the mosaic and it’s external signal connection. Instead there is a ring of conductive material inside the tube, connected to the mosaic, and a ring of conductive material outside the tube with a signal connection. Thus the signal is picked up through this “capacitor” consisting of two plates, internal and external, with the glass as a dielectric.

RCA 1848 Iconoscope TV Camera Tube ca. 1940.

Selling price in 1948 was $500.00. A similar tube, the 1846, was used in a television guided bomb during the latter part of WW2.

RCA 1850A Image Iconoscope Camera Tube ca. 1950.

One of the earliest commercially available camera tubes. The earlier version, RCA 1850, dates back to 1939. Selling price in 1948 was $540.00. (In 1948 you could buy a house for about $3000).

The 1848 is considerably smaller than the 1850 as can be seen here.

Later versions of the 1850A were painted supposedly to reduce stray light from getting in.

The iconoscope was later replaced but it laid the foundations for early television cameras.

  

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Viviana was born and brought up in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, a country of diverse cultures and archaeological places. Viviana graduated High School with honours and is now in her first semester of Civil Engineering at the Privada De Santa Cruz University, her ambition is to build bridges in Bolivia. In her spare time she has worked in many part time posts, from a small snack bar, a home centre for Christmas and as a model. Hobbies are: Reading, collecting toy cars, car racing, volleyball, basketball, karting, listening to music and dance, such as the culture dances of south America. Her motto would be “Live every day as if it were the last one. Nothing is impossible”.

Other Details

• Voting Number: MW502
• Age: 19
• Occupation: Student
• Height: 176

  

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Valdemar Poulsen was Danish telephone engineer and inventor, best known for his Telegraphone, which he patented in 1898. It was the first practical apparatus for magnetic sound recording and reproduction. It recorded, on a wire, the varying magnetic fields produced by a sound. The magnetized wire could then be used to play back the sound.

He also invented the Poulsen Arc Transmitter – the first device for generating continuous radio waves, thus aiding the development of radio broadcasting. Valdemar Poulsen, son of a Danish High Court judge was born 23rd November 1869 in Copenhagen. Valdemar was not a good scholar; the only subjects he was interested in were physics and drawing.

He had no interest in mathematics, a trait he shared with many other great inventors. His father wanted him to become a doctor but after an unsuccessful time at medical school at the University of Copenhagen, 1889-93, at the age of 24, he obtained a position in the technical section of the Copenhagen Telephone Company. His work was mainly troubleshooting which allowed him a fair amount of time for experimenting.

While working there, Poulsen became interested in magnetic recording of sound. There seems to be no record of what gave Poulsen the idea of magnetising steel wire to make sound recordings. Maybe he had read an article written in 1888 by American scientist Oberlin Smith for the magazine Electrical World.

In his article Smith discussed the possibility of permanent magnetic impressions for recording sound and suggested, as a medium, cotton or silk thread, in which steel dust was suspended. Smith also considered steel wire but didn’t think it would be possible ‘that it would divide itself up properly into a number of short magnets” to establish a magnetic pattern as a replica of currents produced by a microphone. Smith never built a machine or proved his theory practically.

In an early experiment Poulsen stretched a steel wire between two parallel walls, inclined at such an angle that a small electromagnet suitably attached to the wire could, assisted by gravity, slide down the wire at a uniform speed. Wires attached to the electromagnet energised it from the voltage of a battery modulated by a microphone. For replay the battery was disconnected, and the microphone replaced by a telephone earpiece, the electromagnet returned to the top and let go. The experiment worked and Poulsen set about putting magnetic recording to use in the shape of a telephone answering machine.

On 1st December 1898, he filed a patent in Denmark for the Telegraphone (or in Danish, Telegrafoon), the first device in history to use magnetic sound recording. An extract from this patent reads: “The invention based upon the fact that when a body made of magnetisable material is touched at different points and at different times by an electromagnet included in a telephonic or telegraphic circuit, its parts are subject to such varied magnetic influences that conversely by the action of the magnetisable body upon the electromagnet the same sounds or signals are subsequently given out in the telephone or recording instrument as those which previously caused the magnetic action upon the magnetisable body.”

Drawing from the Poulsen’s Telegraphone Patent of 1898

That the idea of recording sound magnetically was Poulsen’s alone is proven by the fact that nobody else has ever claimed credit for the invention, unlike the situation surrounding most other electrical devices such as the telephone, phonograph, cinema, sound-on-film and television. Wire recording, tape recording, hard disk, floppy disk, credit cards and train tickets – Poulsen had them all covered as shown in the following extract from his 1899, UK Patent No 8961.

“Instead of a cylinder with a helical steel wire there may be uses as a receiving device a steel band, supported if necessary on an insulating material and brought under the action of an electromagnet. Such an arrangement has the advantage that a steel band of an desired length may be used.

Instead of a cylinder there may be used a disk of magnetisable material over which the electromagnet may be conducted spirally; or a sheet or strip of some insulating material such as paper may be cover with a magnetisable metallic dust and may be used as the magnetisable surface. With the aid of such a strip which may be folded, a message received at any place provided with the new apparatus may be sent to another place where it may be repeated by passing the strip through the apparatus at that place.”

The original Telegraphone consisted of a spirally grooved brass cylinder around which, embedded in the groove, was wound a .01″ diameter steel wire. The two poles of an electromagnet, energised by the voice currents from the microphone, rested against the wire wound round the cylinder.

The cylinder remained stationary while the electromagnet rotated around the coil, the wire being magnetised by amounts corresponding to the strength of the voice currents. When the recording was complete the microphone was switched out of circuit and a telephone receiver connected in its place. The electromagnet now returned to the start and on rotating this time the recorded message was heard back.

Poulsen’s ‘Drum’ Telegraphone, ca. 1898

By the standards then prevailing it worked quite well. Reports by those who heard it remarked on the “naturalness of the reproduction” and the “freedom from noise”. These comparisons were of course based on the quality of acoustically recorded Phonograph cylinders of the period. After inventing the Telegraphone, Poulsen left the telephone company in order to be free to conduct a series of experiments and to follow a new line of investigation that had suggested itself to him.

Patents were taken out throughout the world and Poulsen continued to improve the Telegraphone along with an associate Peder Olaf Pedersen, also an excellent engineer. The next development was a reel-to-reel machine using steel wire passing over a static recording head at 7ft per minute.

Poulsen’s Telegraphone, improved model

Valdemar Poulsen and Peter Jensen with other co-workers at Lyngby, 1907

The Telegraphone received considerable attention when it was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. The few words that the Austrian emperor Francis Joseph spoke into it at that exhibition are believed to be the earliest surviving magnetic recording. Valdemar Poulsen received the Grand Prix of Paris for his Telegraphone. Even with this encouragement, he could not find financial backers in Europe. In 1903, with American associates, Poulsen founded the American Telegraphone Company for the manufacture and sale of an improved version of his device.

The telegraphone recorded continuously for 30 minutes on a length of steel piano-wire moving at a speed of 84 inches (213 cm) per second. Despite the fact that the Telegraphone had a number of advantages over the wax cylinder Dictaphone – better quality, longer playing time, reuse of the media – the company eventually went into receivership. This was probably due more to bad business practice and scandal surrounding the president of the company than to the limitations of the Telegraphone – the low sound output, length of rewind time before replay possible and the wire often tangling. The device did not have wide application, however.

In 1927, American inventor J.A. O’Neill replaced the wire with a magnetically coated ribbon and since then magnetic tape recorders have dominated the recording industry.

Poulsen is also known for his work in improving wireless transmission by means of the arc. In 1903 Poulsen obtained an English patent on his adaptation of a “singing arc” for radio purposes. Invented by the Englishman William Duddell, the singing arc could generate continuous audio waves (hence its name). Poulsen transformed this device so that it could generate radio waves. Poulsen’s arc as a generator of continuous waves differed from the usual arc since it burned in an atmosphere of a hydrocarbon gas in a strong transverse magnetic field.

The Poulsen system is based on the discovery of Mr Duddell that if a current arc is shunted by a circuit containing capacity and inductance there will be established in the circuit electrical oscillations, the frequency of which depends upon the value of the inductance and capacity. The reason for this is that unlike a metallic conductor the arc does not follow Ohm’s law and the curve showing the relation between current and terminal voltage is not a straight rising line, but has what is termed a falling characteristic, that is to say, if the current through the arc be increased the potential difference at its terminals will drop.

Suppose now that a circuit with capacity and inductance in series is placed across the terminals of an arc, the condenser will charge, and in doing so, the current through the arc lessened, the potential difference at its terminals will increase and the condenser to a still higher voltage. After the capacity is fully charged the current through the arc will increase, and owing to the drop in voltage which it causes the condenser will discharge across the arc, and the discharge will, if the resistance is small, be oscillatory.

In order to obtain oscillations of considerable energy Mr. Duddell found that it was necessary to use a capacity of the order of 1 microfarad, and with a capacity of this magnitude it was not possible to obtain the very high frequencies needed for Radio-Telegraphy.

Poulsen’s great discovery was the effect of a hydrogen atmosphere which by cooling the arc increased the steepness of its characteristic curve, and also the use of very powerful magnetic field which enabled him to get a high terminal voltage. By the use of the arc burning in a hydrogen atmosphere, and the powerful transverse magnetic field, he was able to use a small capacity and thus get oscillations of the frequencies useful for Radio-Telegraphy and at the same time powerful.

The practical construction of the Poulsen arc is as follows: the anode is made of copper and the end takes the form of a beak. The cathode is of carbon about one inch in diameter, the arc striking between the copper beak and the edge of the carbon. The carbon is fitted in a holder which is slowly rotated by means of a small motor, and as it burns away a fresh surface is presented and the length of the arc kept constant. The arc-length is also adjustable by means of a screw fitted to the copper electrode.

The electrodes are taken through insulating sleeves in the sides of a water-cooled metallic chamber which is also flanged on the outside to assist the cooling. Through the sides of the chamber, and transversely to the electrodes, pass the pole pieces of a powerful electro-magnet which blows the arc out into a loop, the winding of the magnets being in series with the arc also serve as a choking coils and prevent the oscillations from passing back into the supply circuit. The chamber in which the arc burns is supplied with hydrogen through a tube let into its base and after passing through the chamber escapes through an outlet at the top and is conveyed away by means of a tube connected to it.

The Original Poulsen Arc Converter, 1908

The arc is connected across a 500 volt direct-current supply an across it is shunted the primary circuit, which consists of a condenser and an inductance in series. The antennae is connected to one point of the inductance and the earth wire to another. Signalling is effected by shorting through the Morse key a turn or two of the inductance which alters the wave-length and throws the transmitter in and out of tune with a receiver, a difference of about 5 per cent, being sufficient.

The Poulsen Arc Transmitter

As energy is supplied to the antennae at every swing the oscillations emitted from the Poulsen generator are continuous and undamped, or practically so. The Poulsen transmitter is unlike that of any other system inasmuch as no detector is made use of, but the received energy accumulated in a condenser and discharged at intervals through the telephone by means of a piece of apparatus which the inventor has named a tikker.

A primary coil with variable condenser across its terminals to adjust the turning is coupled to the secondary circuit, which also consists of a coil and a variable condenser; across the terminals of this condenser is joined a mica condenser of fairly large capacity and the tikker, which is an intermittent contact formed by two gold-plated brass wires crossing each other at right angles, one of them being mounted at the end of a small electro-magnetic make and break similar in construction to a trembler bell. The telephone, which is of low resistance, is joined across the mica condenser.

The action of the tuner is as follows: the primary having been tuned to the sending-station and the secondary tuned to the primary; during the intervals when the tikker contacts are open the secondary circuit is left free resonate up, and the energy of many oscillations thus accumulated when the tikker contacts close, the circuit, owing to the added capacity of the mica condenser, which is now in parallel, will oscillate to a lower frequency. The opening of the tikker contacts will be determined by the presence or absence of a current across them, as this determines the conductivity of the small gap between the wires as the tikker starts to open.

It will thus be seen that when the current is passing through zero the mica condenser, charged as it is with the greater part of the energy, will be disconnected from the secondary circuit and discharge through the telephone. The coupling between the primary and the secondary is very loose and full use is thus made of resonance, the tuning being so sharp that a difference of 4 or 5 per cent. In the wave-length is sufficient to render the signals inaudible. The tikker method, although one of the most sensitive means known for detecting electrical oscillations, labours under the disadvantage that it is not able to receive signals from the ordinary spark transmitters which give out damped and discontinuous oscillations.

In 1903 Poulsen developed an arc transmitter which increased the frequency range of Duddell’s Singing Arc (1900) from 10 kHz to 100 kHz, enabling speech to be transmitted up to a radius of 150 miles. By 1920 the Poulsen Arc transmitter was as powerful as 1000 kW with ranges of up to 2,500 miles.
(See additional information on the Poulsen’s transmitters)

Valdemar Poulsen with his speech transmitter at Lyngby, Denmark in 1908

The Federal Telegraph Company, specializing in arc transmitters, brought Poulsen’s arc to America. When NAA, the United States naval spark station at Arlington, Virginia, went into commission in 1912, an arc also was installed; thus two rivals, Fessenden with the spark, Poulsen with the arc met on a common proving ground. Arc transmitters up to 500 kilowatts were tested by the Navy.

One main disadvantage was found in that the arc emitted harmonics and arc mush; the heat was so terrific that a water cooling system was required. Nevertheless, during the First World War a number of battleships carried arc transmitters.

The First Complete Arc Transmitter and receiver built by Poulsen Wireless in 1910 in Palo Alto (left to right: Doug Perham, F. Albertus, and Peter V. Jensen). Jensen left shortly after this photo was taken to start the Magnavox [loudspeaker] Co.

Federal Telegraph’s engineering staff, 1917 (left to right: Leonard Fuller, Chief Engineer; Harold Elliot, Chief Draftsman; Corwin Chapmen, Lab. Engineer; Kurt Blew, Shop Forman; Ralph Beal, Assistant Chief Engineer; and Adrien Anderson, Factory Engineer). The original Poulsen 100 W arc, brought from Denmark by Elwell, is in the forground. The first of six 500 kW arcs, built for the U.S. Navy, stands behind the group. It was eventually installed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Later the U.S.S. George Washington, which took President Wilson to the Peace Conference, was equipped with an arc in hopes that communication might be maintained all the way across the sea. It was a triumph for radio when the Washington entering the harbor at Brest flashed signals from its arc which were picked up at Otter Cliffs, Bar Harbor, Maine, and a 600-word message was received without the loss of a word.

Subsequent efforts with this device by Poulsen and others made long-wave radio broadcasting possible by 1920.

1000 kw Poulsen Arc Converter installed at Lafayette Radio Station

Although Poulsen never graduated from university we was well acclaimed by his fellow inventors and scientists. In 1907 Poulsen received the Gold Medal of the Royal Danish Society for Science, and in 1909 the University of Leipzig conferred upon him the honorary degree, Doctor of Philosophy. He received from the Danish government the Medal of Merit, an honor he shared at that time with Nansen, Georg Brandes, Sven Hedin and Amundsen. At his death Dr. Poulsen was a fellow of the Danish Academy of Sciences, the Danish Academy of Technical Science and the Swedish Institute for Engineering Research, and an Honorary Doctor of the University of Leipzig.

Valdemar Poulsen died in 1942. The picture shows his grave.

Danish postal stamp memorizing 100th Birthday of the Inventor Valdemar Poulsen.

  

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Vincent Willem van Gogh (March 30, 1853 – July 29, 1890) was a Dutch painter, generally considered one of the greatest painters in European art history. He produced all of his work (some 900 paintings and 1100 drawings) during a period of only 10 years before he succumbed to mental illness (possibly bipolar disorder) and committed suicide.

He had little success during his lifetime, but his posthumous fame grew rapidly, especially following a showing of 71 of van Gogh’s paintings in Paris on March 17, 1901 (11 years after his death). (Properly, in Dutch language pronunciation, the name Gogh rhymes with the English language loch, in other languages than Dutch it is also pronounced ‘goph’, ‘go’ and ‘goe’.)

Van Gogh’s influence on expressionism, fauvism and early abstraction was enormous, and can be seen in many other aspects of 20th-century art. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is dedicated to Van Gogh’s work and that of his contemporaries. The Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo (also in the Netherlands), has a considerable collection of Vincent van Gogh paintings as well.

Several paintings by Van Gogh rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. On March 30, 1987 Van Gogh’s painting Irises was sold for a record $53.9 million at Sotheby’s, New York. On May 15, 1990 his Portrait of Doctor Gachet was sold for $82.5 million at Christie’s, thus establishing a new price record (see also List of most expensive paintings).

Life and work

Vincent was born in Zundert, Netherlands. Son of Anna Cornelia Carbentus and Theodorus van Gogh, a Protestant minister, a profession that Vincent found appealing and to which he would be drawn to a certain extent later in his life. His sister described him as a serious and introspective child.

At age 16 Vincent started to work for the art dealer Goupil & Co. in The Hague. His brother Theo, four years his junior and with whom Vincent cherished a lifelong friendship, would join the company later. This friendship is amply documented in the vast amount of letters they sent each other. These letters have been preserved and were published in 1914. They provide a lot of insight into the life of the painter, and show him to be a talented writer with a keen mind. Theo would support Vincent financially throughout his life.

In 1873, his firm transferred him to London, then to Paris. He became increasingly interested in religion; in 1876 Goupil dismissed him for lack of motivation. He became a teaching assistant in Ramsgate near London, then returned to Amsterdam to study theology in 1877.

After dropping out in 1878, he became a lay minister in Belgium in a poor mining region known as the Borinage. He even preached down in the mines and was extremely concerned with the lot of the workers. He was dismissed after 6 months and continued without pay. During this period he started to produce charcoal sketches.

In 1880, Vincent followed the suggestion of his brother Theo and took up painting in earnest. For a brief period Vincent took painting lessons from Anton Mauve at The Hague. Although Vincent and Anton soon split over a divergence of artistic views, influences of the Hague School of painting would remain in Vincent’s work, notably in the way he played with light and in the looseness of his brush strokes. However his usage of colours, favouring dark tones, set him apart from his teacher.

In 1881 he declared his love to his widowed cousin Kee Vos, who rejected him. Later he would move in with the prostitute Sien Hoornik and her children and considered marrying her; his father was strictly against this relationship and even his brother Theo advised against it. They later separated.

Impressed and influenced by Jean-Francois Millet, van Gogh focused on painting peasants and rural scenes. He moved to the Dutch province Drenthe, later to Nuenen, North Brabant, also in The Netherlands. Here he painted in 1885 The Potato Eaters (Dutch Aardappeleters, now in The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam).

In the winter of 1885-1886 Van Gogh attended the art academy of Antwerp, Belgium. This proved a disappointment as he was dismissed after a few months by Professor Eugene Siberdt. Van Gogh did however get in touch with Japanese art during this period, which he started to collect eagerly. He admired its bright colours, use of canvas space and the role lines played in the picture. These impressions would influence him strongly. Van Gogh made some paintings in Japanese style. Also some of the portraits he painted are set against a background which shows Japanese art.

In spring 1886 Van Gogh went to Paris, where he moved in with his brother Theo; they shared a house on Montmartre. Here he met the painters Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Emile Bernard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin. He discovered impressionism and liked its use of light and colour, more than its lack of social engagement (as he saw it). Especially the technique known as pointillism (where many small dots are applied to the canvas that blend into rich colors only in the eye of the beholder, seeing it from a distance) made its mark on Van Goghs own style. It should be noted that Van Gogh is regarded as a post-impressionist, rather than an impressionist. Van Gogh also used complementary colors, especially blue and orange, in close proximity in order to enhance the brilliance of each (see color).

In 1888, when city life and living with his brother proved too much, Van Gogh left Paris and went to Arles, Bouches-du-Rhone, France. He was impressed with the local landscape and hoped to found an art colony. He decorated a “yellow house” and created a celebrated series of yellow sunflower paintings for this purpose. Only Paul Gauguin, whose simplified colour schemes and forms (known as synthetism) attracted van Gogh, followed his invitation. The admiration was mutual, and Gauguin painted van Gogh painting sunflowers. However their encounter ended in a quarrel. Van Gogh suffered a mental breakdown and cut off part of his left ear, which he gave to a startled prostitute friend. Gauguin left in December 1888.

One of Vincent’s famous paintings, the Bedroom in Arles of 1888, uses bright yellow and unusual perspective effects in depicting the interior of his bedroom. The boldly vanishing lines are sometimes attributed to his changing mental condition. The only painting he sold during his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, was created in 1888. It is now on display in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russia.

Van Gogh now exchanged painting dots for small stripes. He suffered from depression, and in 1889 on his own request Van Gogh was admitted to the psychiatric center at Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole in Saint Remy de Provence, Bouches-du-Rhone, France. During his stay here the clinic and its garden became his main subject. Pencil strokes changed again, now into swirls.

In May 1890 Vincent left the clinic and went to the physician Paul Gachet, in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where he was closer to his brother Theo, who had recently married. Gachet had been recommended to him by Pissarro; he had treated several artists before. Here van Gogh created his only etching: a portrait of the melancholic doctor Gachet. His depression aggravated, and on July 27 of the same year, at the age of 37, after a fit of painting activity, van Gogh shot himself in the chest.

He died two days later, with Theo at his side, who reported his last words as “La tristesse durera toujours” (French: “The sadness will last forever”). He was buried at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise; Theo, unable to come to terms with his brother’s death, died 6 months later and, at his wife’s request, was buried next to Vincent.

It would not take long before Vincent’s fame grew higher and higher. Large exhibitions were organised soon: Paris 1901, Amsterdam 1905, Cologne 1912, New York 1913 and Berlin 1914.

Van Gogh’s life forms the basis for Irving Stone’s biographical novel Lust for Life.

  

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Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was a poet and courtesan of Venice during the sixteenth century.

Veronica Franco was the daughter of a “cortigiana,” or courtesan, and was married at an early age. The marriage turned out badly, and she chose to leave her husband. In order to support herself she turned to the profession of courtesan and quickly rose through the ranks to consort with some of the leading notables of her day. She even had a brief liaison with King Henri III of France. She was listed as one of the foremost courtesans of Venice in the “catalog,” Il Catalogo di tutte le principale et piu honorate cortigiane di Venezia.

An educated woman, Veronica Franco also wrote two volumes of poetry: Terze rime and Lettere familiari a diversi, in 1575 and 1580, respectively. She published books of letters and collected the works of other leading writers into anthologies. She also founded and funded a charity for courtesans and their children.

While prosperous in her dual career, Veronica Franco’s life was not without hardship. In 1575, a year of the Black Death, she was forced to leave Venice and lost much of her wealth when her house and possessions were looted. On her return in 1577 she was to face a trial before the Inquisition for witchcraft, but was acquitted of the charges. Her later life is largely obscure, though surviving records suggest reasonable prosperity.

The life and times of Veronica Franco were made into the 1998 movie, Dangerous Beauty.

  

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Vasco da Gama (1469?-December 24, 1524), was a Portuguese explorer who was the first person to sail from Europe to Malabar, India.

From the early 15th century, the nautical school of Henry the Navigator had been extending Portuguese knowledge of the coast of Africa. From the 1460s, the goal had become one of rounding that continent’s southern extremity and gaining direct access to the riches of India, mainly black pepper and other spices. Born in Sines, Portugal , da Gama was just shy of thirty years old as these long-term plans were coming to fruition.

Bartolomeu Dias had returned from rounding the Cape of Good Hope and exploring as far as the Fish River in modern-day South Africa, while from India Pero da Covilha had explored south for some of the distance intervening between Dias’ explorations and the subcontinent. It remained only for the two segments to be joined into one voyage.

This task was given to Da Gama’s father, Estevao da Gama , but he died before he could begin. Vasco was then given the job on the strength of his work for the Portuguese crown along the Gold Coast of Africa. On July 8, 1497 four ships (the Sao Gabriel, the Sao Rafael, the Berrio, and a storage ship of unknown name) left Lisbon and the voyage began.

By December 16 they had passed the Fish River and continued on into waters unknown to Europeans. With Christmas pending they gave the coast they were passing the name Natal (Christmas in Portuguese), which it retains to this day. By January they had reached modern-day Mozambique, Arab-controlled territory on the East African coast that was part of the Indian Ocean’s network of trade. Having got that far, da Gama was able to employ a pilot at Malindi, who brought the expedition the rest of the way to Calicut (the exact Malayalam name is Kozhikode) on the southwest coast of India on May 20, 1498. Sometimes violent negotiations with the local ruler (the Samoothiri Raja, usually anglicized as Zamorin) ensued in the teeth of resistance from Arab merchants. Eventually da Gama was able to gain an ambiguous letter of concession for trading rights, but had to sail off without warning after the Zamorin insisted on his leaving behind all his goods as collateral. Da Gama kept his goods, but left behind a few Portuguese with orders to start a trading post.

Upon his return to Portugal in September 1499, da Gama was richly rewarded as the man who had brought to fruition a plan that had taken eighty years. He was given the title “Admiral of the Indian Ocean”, and on February 12, 1502 he sailed again with a fleet of twenty warships to enforce Portuguese interests. Pedro Alvares Cabral had been sent out two years earlier (on which voyage he incidentally discovered Brazil) and found that those at the trading post had been murdered, encountered further resistance and bombarded Calicut.

Da Gama assaulted and exacted tribute from the East African Arabian port of Kilwa , which had been one of those involved with frustrating the Portuguese; he played privateer amongst Arab merchant ships; and then finally smashed a Calicut fleet of twenty-nine ships and essentially conquered that port city. In return for peace, he received valuable trade concessions and a vast quantity of plunder that put him in extremely good favor with the Portuguese crown. Returning to Portugal, he was made Count Vidigueira out of lands that had previously belonged to the royal Braganca family.

Having acquired a fearsome reputation as a “fixer” of problems that arose in India, he was sent to the subcontinent once more in 1524. The intention was that he was to replace the incompetent Eduardo de Menezes as viceroy of the Portuguese possessions, but he died not long after arriving in Calicut. After burial for some time at St.Francis Church, Fort Kochi, Kochi, India, his remains were returned to Portugal in 1539 and re-interred in Vidigueira.

As much as anyone after Henry the Navigator, da Gama was responsible for Portugal’s success as an early colonizing power. Besides the first voyage itself, it was his astute mix of politics and war on the other side of the world that placed Portugal in a prominent position in the Indian Ocean trade. The Portuguese “national epic”, the Lusiadas of Luis Vaz de Camoes largely concerns Vasco da Gama’s voyages.

  

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Victoria Silvstedt is a model and sometimes actress and was born on September 19, 1974 in Sweden.

Silvstedt appeared as a centerfold in the December 1996 issue of Playboy and was subsequently named Playmate of the Year in 1997.

She then became a spokesmodel for Guess Jeans. She has appeared in films such as Boat Trip , The Independent, and BASEketball. She was already well recognised in the UK when she took on a new career, hosting The Late Show on Virgin Radio.

  

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Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (July 7 (O.S.) July 19 (N.S.), 1893 – April 14, 1930) was among the foremost representatives for the poetic futurism of early 20th century Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union.

Life and work He was born the third child in Bagdadi , Georgia where his father worked as a forest ranger.
Both parents were descendants of Cossacks. At the age of 14 Mayakovsky took part in socialist demonstrations at the town of Kutaisi, where he attended the local Grammar School. After the sudden and premature death of his father in 1906, the family – Mayakovsky, his mother, and his two sisters – moved to Moscow, where he attended the school No. 5.

In Moscow Mayakovsky developed a passion for Marxist literature and took part in numerous activities of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party; he was to later become an RSDLP (Bolshevik) member. In 1908, he was dismissed from the Grammar School due to his mother’s inability to afford tuition.

Around that time, Mayakovsky was imprisoned on three occasions for subversive political activities, but being underage, he avoided deportation. During a period of solitary confinement in Butyrka prison in 1909, he commenced writing poetry, but his poems were confiscated. On his release from prison, he continued working within the socialist movement, and in 1911 he joined the Moscow Art School where he became acquainted with members of the Russia’s Futurist movement. He became a leading spokesman for the group Gileas, and a close friend to David Burlyuk , whom he saw as his mentor.

The 1912 Futurist publication, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste printed Mayakovsky’s first published poems: “Night” , and “Morning” . Because of their political activities, Burlyuk and Mayakovsky were expelled from the Moscow Art School in 1914.

His work continued in the Futurist vein until 1914. His artistic development then shifted increasingly towards narrative-based directions and it is this work, published during the period immediately preceding the Russian Revolution, which was to establish his reputation as a poet in Russia and abroad.

A Cloud in Trousers (1915) was Mayakovsky’s first major poem of appreciable length and it depicted the heated subjects of love, revolution, religion, and art written from the vantage point of a spurned lover. The language of the work was the language of the streets, and Mayakovsky went on to considerable lengths to deconstruct the idealistic and romaticised notions of poetry and poets.

  

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Victoria Gotti (born 1963) is the daughter of former mob boss John Gotti and his wife Victoria DiGiorgio, and the star of Growing Up Gotti on the A&E Network. She has three boys by her ex-husband Carmine Agnello: Carmine, John and Frank.

Victoria is a columnist for the US tabloid Star and is the author of several books including:

The Senator’s Daughter (1997)
I’ll Be Watching You (1998)
Superstar (2000)

She has mitral valve prolapse and wears a pacemaker.

  

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Vince Gill (born April 12, 1957) is an American country music singer.

He was born in Norman, Oklahoma and learned to play banjo and guitar before he started high school. After he graduated, he played in a number of bluegrass bands including the Pure Prairie League.

He signed with RCA Records in 1983, and scored his first solo hits while on that label. In 1989 he switched to MCA Records where he recorded his breakthrough hit “When I Call Your Name.”

His 1998 album The Key received great critical acclaim, and is considered by some to be among the best country music albums ever released.

His other albums include Next Big Thing (2003) and Let’s Make Sure We Kiss Goodbye (2000).

He hosted the CMA Awards every year from 1992 to 2003. In 2004 he received a Grammy Award for “Best male country vocal performance”.

Gill married Christian pop singer Amy Grant in March 2000. He was previously married to singer Janis Gill , whom he divorced in 1997.

  

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Vera (Cooper) Rubin (born 23 July 1928) is an astronomer who has done pioneering work on galaxy rotation rates. Her discovery of what is known as “flat rotation curves” is the most direct and robust evidence of dark matter (as of 2004).

She holds a B.A. from Vassar College (1948), M.A. from Cornell University (1951), and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University (1954), as well as numerous honorary degrees and awards. Rubin is currently a research astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington . So far she has co-authored 217 peer reviewed research papers.

All four of her children have earned Ph.D.s in the natural sciences or mathematics.

  

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Varg Vikernes was born Kristian Vikernes on February 11, 1973, outside of Bergen, Norway. Known by the nom de plume Count Grishnackh during the early days of black metal in Norway, Vikernes was the man behind the one-man music project Burzum, and lately has become a prominent voice for Neo-Nazism.

He is currently incarcerated for the 1993 murder of his former friend and member of the black metal-band Mayhem systein Aarseth (AKA Euronymous), serving a sentence of 21 years, the maximum possible in Norway. Euronymous published the first Burzum records, though the circumstances surrounding the reason for the murder are not entirely clear.

Aarseth no longer had control of Vikernes’ material, but Vikernes claims Aarseth had threatened to kill him and that his act was in fact ‘premeditated self-defense’, which according to his own “Nordic” code of ethics was a perfectly viable reason. According to those who knew both, these claims are probably fictitious. Some say they had an argument about a girl.

Vikernes is a proponent of the Asatru religion and believes it is a religion for all Germanic peoples. He helped create the Odalist movement & co-founded the ‘All-Germanic Heathen Front’ (although he is neither a member nor a leader). He is the author of several short works on his personal weltanschauung, namely ‘Vargsm’l’ (lit. ‘the speech of Varg’), ‘Irminsul’ & ‘Germansk Mytologi og Verdensanskuelse’. Vikernes interprets the old lore in a fascistic way and belongs to the leading heads of modern esoteric fascism.

He terminated his musical project that he continued from prison in 2000 due to the ‘negative notoriety’ which he believed he continually received from it as well as believing he was constantly misunderstood and misinterpreted by an ‘ignorant’ “fan” base that saw contradictions in either his outlook or how things he has said correlated to his outlook which he assures were never contradictive but simply novel & pervasive.

Vikernes has written lyrics for several songs by the band Darkthrone (“quintessence,” “as fittermice as satan’s spys” etc) that make use of characteristics from old Germanic folklore. In these, “satan” is brought up in the context of an ‘eye’ which is a source of light (i.e. the Sun) with mentions of a ’spear,’ a ‘hall of battle.’ All of which are masked references to the Germanic god Odin as he has been identified by the Christian Church. This was done with the double meaning that Vikernes does indeed consider Odin the “Adversary” of Judeo-Christianity as they could understand it. This has been mostly mistaken as ‘proving’ that Vikernes was at one time a “Satanist” and therefore someone who cannot adhere to one line of thinking, but in fact the case is that he is an artist as well as an ideologue. Vikernes has stated many times that he is entirely opposed to Satanism as he considers it a reactionary form of Christianity.

He was apparently fascinated with the fictional realm of Mordor from The Lord of the Rings, and claimed to have mastered the Black Speech, from which he took the name Burzum. Again this shows a double meaning in that the Christianized perspective of Teutonic sourced myths which J.R.R. Tolkien used in his Lord of the Rings books to create that language made him give the word ‘Burz’ the meaning “Darkness.” When in the old Germanic language of heathen times “Berts” meant ‘Bright,’ ‘Light’ or ‘Brilliant.’ Vikernes was using fiction to empathize the truth on a Jungian archetypal level.

In October 2003 he attempted to escape from jail. After hijacking a car and apparently driving around with no clear plan he was apprehended by the police. He was caught with an Assault rifle, a handheld GPS system and had Military Uniforms/Camouflage clothes with him.

  

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Vandana Shiva (born 1952) is a physicist, philosopher, ecofeminist, environmental activist and writer. Vandana was born in Dehra Dun, India .

She participated in the 1970s in the Chipko movement, of women hugging the trees to prevent their felling. In 1982, she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology . Initiatives of this foundation are the organic farming programme Navdanya, the Bija Vidyapeeth (or Seed University, International College for Sustainable Living), and Diverse Women for Diversity . Another of the Vandana Shiva’s initiatives is the Living Democracy Movement .

She received the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in 1993 “…For placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse.”. Other awards she has received include the Global 500 Award of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1993 , and the Earth Day International Award of the United Nations (UN).

Vandana Shiva is one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization , (along with Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, etc.), and a figure of the global solidarity movement known as anti-globalization movement.

  

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Vaclav Klaus (born 19 June 1941) is the second President of the Czech Republic and a former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. He is indisputably one of the most important Czech politicians of the recent era.

Klaus was born in Prague and graduated from the Prague School of Economics in 1963; he also spent some time at universities in Italy (1966) and the United States (1969).

He pursued a postgraduate scientific career at the Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, which he left (reportedly, he was ejected for political reasons) for the Czechoslovak State Bank in 1970; he joined the perestroika-minded Prognostics Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1987. In 1995 he achieved the degree of Professor of Finance at the Prague School of Economics.

Vaclav Klaus entered full-time politics soon after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. As a member (and later chairman) of Civic Forum he became the federal Minister of Finance. In April 1991 Klaus co-founded Obcanska demokraticka strana (Civic-Democratic Party, ODS), the strongest and most right-wing of the post-Civic Forum splinter parties. He remained its chairman until the autumn of 2002.

In June 1992, ODS won the elections in the Czech Republic with a reform program; however, the winner in Slovakia was Vladimir Meciar’s nationalistic HZDS. It soon became apparent that Slovak demands for increased sovereignty were incompatible with the limited “viable federation” supported in the Czech lands; both leaders assumed premiership in their respective polities and quickly agreed on a smooth division of Czechoslovakia under a caretaker federal government.

Klaus continued as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic after the 1996 election, but ODS’s win was much narrower and his government was plagued by increasing instability and economic problems. He had to resign in the autumn of 1997 after a government crisis caused by an ODS funding scandal.

Vaclav Klaus is a prominent member of the Mont Pelerin Society. His enthusiasm for the free market economy as exemplified by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and as practised by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush was well known and also often criticised. Others agree with his free-market concepts, but point out that during his premiership he neglected the importance of law and enforcement of property rights.

ODS lost the parliamentary elections in 1998 and Milos Zeman, chairman of the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD), succeeded Klaus as prime minister, although his minority government had to be supported by an “opposition agreement” with ODS and personally Klaus, who became the chairman of the Parliament.

ODS was again defeated in the elections of June 2002; after long equivocation, Klaus resigned as party chair in the autumn and was promptly elected the honorary chairman by unanimous vote.

After more than five years spent in opposition, Klaus was elected President of the Czech Republic by joint session of both chambers of parliament on February 28, 2003; he succeeded Vaclav Havel, who has been one of his greatest political opponents since the division of Czechoslovakia. The result surprised many: Klaus was elected at the third vote with just 142 votes out of 281. The governing coalition, buffeted especially by feuds within CSSD, was unable to agree on a common candidate to oppose him. Klaus achieved the quorum thanks to the votes of most Communists (whose parliament club he visited before the election and whose shunning from political meetings he ended). Apparently a faction within CSSD, unsatisfied with Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla, and reportedly even a few right-leaning members of KDU-CSL, supported Klaus.

Vaclav Klaus still has many objectors, and his alleged arrogance is the least among their criticism – they depict him as a narrow-minded pragmatist interested only in technology of power and textbook economic precepts. Beside faults of his governments, the most contested issues are his relation to Communism, both in the country’s past and the strengthening political party today (he’s published articles praising “the grey zone” of the majority of ordinary people and condemning dissidents like Havel for haughtiness; in another article he declared himself a “non-communist” but not anticommunist, which he rejects as cheap and superficial posturing), his Eurosceptic pronouncements, which often border on pandering to the public’s nationalist instincts; and an apparent desire to be liked at the expense of a longer-term, more demanding agenda. On the other hand, his backers claim that among Czech politicians of the last decade, Klaus is one of the few, if not the only one, with the intellectual capacity and dedication necessary for true statesman’s greatness.

Klaus’s popularity in public opinion polls grew rapidly in the first half of 2003, probably fuelled by his public opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, his loudly voiced scepticism on the process of European integration, refusals to grant amnesties, and sometimes populist rhetoric.

Life outside politics

Vaclav Klaus is married to economist Livia Klausova and has five grandchildren and two sons: Vaclav is the headmaster of a private grammar school in Prague and Jan works as a financial analyst.

Vaclav Klaus is also a writer and wrote over 20 books on various social, political, and economics subjects, including a book about the first year of his presidency, Year One.

For many years during his youth, Vaclav Klaus was an outstanding sportsman, playing basketball and volleyball. He also enjoys skiing and tennis. He was the first to break the Stanley Cup tradition that the only those hockey players who have won it can hold the Cup; on July 26, 2004, a couple of Czech hockey players presented it to him at Prague Castle.

In his spare time, he enjoys fiction and music, especially jazz. Prof. Vaclav Klaus holds a number of international awards and honorary doctorates from universities all over the world.

  

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Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885) was a French author, the most important of the Romantic authors in the French language. His major works include the novels The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables, and a large body of poetry.

Life and work

Hugo was born in Besancon, Doubs in the region of Franche-Comte. He lived in exile during the reign of Napoleon III – in Jersey 1852-1855 and in Guernsey from 1855 until his return to France in 1870.

Although Hugo is better known to the English-speaking world as a novelist, it was as a poet that he broke new ground. The French poetic traditions were as well-established in his time as the English ones were before the time of the Romantic poets, and Hugo’s contribution may be compared with that of Wordsworth. He believed that the poet’s purpose should be two-fold:

To echo universal sentiment by revealing his own feelings, uniting the voices of mankind, nature and history.
To guide the reader: “faire flamboyer l’avenir” – to lead the way.

In his epic, La Legende des Siecles, he attempts, by reference to historical events, to depict humanity’s struggle to emerge from obscurity into enlightenment.

Hugo was the Honorary President and founder of the Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale (ALAI) in 1878 in Paris which gave itself the objective of creating an international convention for the protection of literary and artistic properties which was achieved eight years later with the Berne Convention on September 9, 1886.

Hugo died in Paris on May 22, 1885. His death, and the spontaneous national mourning which followed, inspired the French government to reinvent the Pantheon in Paris as a temple in homage to the great men (and, eventually, women) of France. He is buried in its necropolis.

Hugo also became one of the three primary saints worshipped in the Vietnamese religion Cao Dai.

  

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Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was a British author and feminist. Between the world wars, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury group.

Life and Work Born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London, Woolf was brought up and educated in a classically Victorian household at 22 Hyde Park Gate. In 1895, following the death of her mother, she had the first of several nervous breakdowns. She later indicated in an autobiographical account, “Moments of Being,” that she and her sister Vanessa Bell had been sexually abused by their half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth. Following the death of her father (Sir Leslie Stephen, a well-known editor and literary critic) in 1904, she and her sister, Vanessa, moved to a home in Bloomsbury, forming the initial kernel for the intellectual circle known as the Bloomsbury group.

While nowhere near a simple recapitulation of the coterie’s ideals, Woolf’s work can be understood as consistently in dialogue with Bloomsbury, particularly its tendency (informed by G.E. Moore, among others) towards doctrinaire rationalism.

She began writing professionally in 1905, initially for the Times Literary Supplement. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf, a civil servant and political theorist. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915. She went on to publish novels and essays as a public intellectual to both critical and popular success. Much of her work was self-published through the Hogarth Press. She is hailed as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century and one of the foremost Modernists.

Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. In her works she experimented with stream-of-consciousness, the underlying psychological as well as emotional motives of characters, and the various possibilities of fractured narrative and chronology. She has, in the words of E.M. Forster, pushed the English language “a little further against the dark,” and her literary achievements and creativity are influential even today.

In 1941, Woolf ended her life by suicide. She filled her pockets with stones, and drowned herself in the River Ouse, near her home in Rodmell. She left a suicide note for her husband: “I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we cant go through another of those terrible times. And I shant recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and cant concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness… I can’t fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work” (The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. VI, p. 481).

Hermione Lee’s Virginia Woolf provides an authoritative examination of Woolf’s life, updating the earlier biography by Woolf’s own nephew, Quentin Bell .
Modern Scholarship

Recently, studies of Virginia Woolf have focused on feminist and lesbian themes in her work, such as in the 1997 collection of critical essays, Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings, edited by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. Louise A. DeSalvo offers treatment of the incestuous sexual abuse Woolf suffered as a young woman in her book Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and World. Her fiction is also studied for its insight into shell shock, war, class, and modern British society. Her best-known nonfiction work, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas , discusses the largely failed role of women in the literary canon and the future of women in education and society.

In 2002, The Hours, a film loosely based on Woolf’s life and her novel Mrs. Dalloway, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It did not win, but Nicole Kidman was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Woolf in the movie. The film was adapted from Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel of the same name. The Hours was Woolf’s working title for Mrs. Dalloway. Many Virginia Woolf scholars are highly critical of the portrayal of Woolf and her works in the film, and neither the film nor the novel should be considered as an accurate account or literary criticism of Mrs. Dalloway.

  

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Designer and educator Victor Papanek (1927-1999) was a strong advocate of the socially and ecologically responsible design of products and tools. He disapproved of manufactured products that were unsafe, showy, maladapted, or essentially useless. His products, writings, and lectures were considered an example and spur by many designers, and he was an untiring eloquent promoter of social and ecological design.

Papanek was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1927. He attended public school in England. He emigrated to the U.S. and studied design and architecture. He worked with Frank Lloyd Wright in 1949. He earned his Bachelor?s degree at Cooper Union in New York (1950) and did postgraduate studies in design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.A. 1955). Papanek was interested in humankind as such and pursued an interest in anthropology, living and working for several years with Navajos, Inuit, and Balinese.

Victor Papanek taught at the University of Toronto, the Rhode Island School of Design, Purdue University, the California Institute of the Arts (where he was dean), and other places in North America. He headed the design department in the Kansas City Art Institute from 1976 to 1981. In 1981 he became the J.L. Constant Professor of Architecture and Design at the University of Kansas. He also worked, taught, and consulted in England, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, and Australia.

Papanek created product designs for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Volvo of Sweden contracted him to design a taxi for the disabled. His designed products also included a remarkable transistor radio made from ordinary metal food cans that was designed to be produced cheaply in developing countries.

Interested in all aspects of design and how they affected people and the environment, Papanek felt that much of what was manufactured in the U.S. was inconvenient, sometimes frivolous.

As Papanek traveled around the world, he gave lectures about his ideas for ecologically sound design and designs to serve the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. He wrote or co-wrote eight books. Papanek received numerous awards, including a Distinguished Designer fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988. The next year he received the IKEA Foundation International Award.

  

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Veruca Salt is an alternative rock group of the 1990s, named after a character from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Louise Post (guitar/vocals), Nina Gordon (guitar/vocals), Steve Lack (bass) and Jim Shapiro (drums) formed in Chicago, releasing “Seether”/”All Hail Me” on Minty Fresh Records , an independent label, in 1994. The single was a success and Veruca Salt accompanied Hole on a tour, then released their debut full-length LP, American Thighs.

After signing to Geffen Records, the band quickly gained in popularity as “Seether” became an MTV hit. The EP Victrola was released in 1995. Veruca Salt’s popularity skyrocketed after their second full album, Eight Arms to Hold You (1997), was released; the album generated two hit singles: Volcano Girls and Shutterbug. Shapiro left the band soon afterwards and was replaced by Stacy Jones (of Letters to Cleo). In 1998, Gordon left to pursue a solo career (her debut album Tonight and the Rest of my Life was published in 2000) and Post reformed the band with Stephen Fitzpatrick (guitar), Suzanne Sokol (bass) and Jimmy Madla (drums), signing with Beyond Records . The debut album with the new lineup was 2000’s Resolver.

  

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Vanessa Marcil (born Vanessa Ortiz on October 15, 1969 in Indio, California) is an American actress. She is probably best known for her role as Brenda Barrett on the soap opera General Hospital. She garnered three Emmy award nominations (1997, 1998 and 2003) for her portrayal, winning in 2003 as “Outstanding Supporting Actress.

” In February 1998, she was named “Outstanding Lead Actress” at the Soap Opera Digest Awards . After six years on General Hospital, she left the show to star in the made-for-television movie To Love, Honor and Deceive , and had a recurring guest role on the police drama High Incident produced by Steven Spielberg. Marcil joined the cast of Beverly Hills 90210 in November 1998 as Gina Kinkaid and remained with the show for one-and-a-half seasons.

Marcil made her feature film debut in the 1997 film The Rock, in which she starred opposite Nicolas Cage, Sean Connery and Ed Harris. In 1999, she starred in two independent films: Nice Guys Sleep Alone with Sean O’Bryan and This Space Between Us with Jeremy Sisto .

Marcil was awarded the 2001 “Sojourn Service Award” and has supported Sojourn Services for Battered Women and their children by hosting charity events and making appearances on Wheel of Fortune, playing for funds for the organization. Through her fundraising efforts, she hopes to increase awareness of domestic violence and inspire battered woman to take control of their lives.

Marcil was rumored to be married to actor Corey Feldman in 1989. She was engaged to General Hospital co-star Tyler Christopher, but the two never married. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California with her son Kassius, whose father is Brian Austin Green.

  

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Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov Pronounced: vlah-DEE-meer nah-BAWK-awf (April 10 O.S. [April 22/23 N.S.], 1899 – July 2, 1977), was a Russian author, lepidopterist and chess problemist.
Brief biography The eldest son of Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and his wife Elena, nee Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova, he was born in St. Petersburg where he also spent his childhood and youth.

After emigration from Russia in 1919, the family settled briefly in England and Vladimir enrolled in Cambridge for his studies of French and Russian literature. In 1923, he graduated from Cambridge and relocated to Berlin, where he gained some reputation within the colony of Russian emigres as a novelist and poet. He married Vera Slonim in Berlin in 1925, with whom he had a son, Dmitri, born in 1934.

Nabokov left Germany with his family in 1937 for Paris and in 1940 fled from the advancing German troops to the United States. It was here that he met Edmund Wilson, who introduced Nabokov’s work to American editors, eventually leading to his international recognition.

He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.

Nabokov was a synaesthete and described aspects of synaesthesia in several of his works.

Note on Nabokov’s date of birth

His date of birth was April 10, 1899, by the Julian calendar. The Gregorian equivalent was then April 22, but it changed to April 23 in 1900, while Russia did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918. Accordingly, his date of birth may correctly be considered as April 22, as some sources show, but April 23 is the birthday that he actually observed.

Work

His first writings were in the Russian language, but he came to his greatest distinction in the English language. For this achievement, he has been compared with Joseph Conrad; yet some view this as a dubious comparison, as Conrad only composed in English, never in his native Polish. Nabokov translated many of his early works into English, sometimes in cooperation with his son Dmitri Nabokov. His trilingual upbringing (English, Russian and French) had a profound influence on his artistry.

Nabokov is noted for his complex plots and clever word play. He gained both fame and notoriety with his novel Lolita (1955), which tells of a grown man’s consummated passion for a twelve-year-old girl. This and his other novels, particularly Pale Fire (1962), won him a place among the greatest novelists of the 20th century. Perhaps his defining work, which met with a mixed response, is his longest novel, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. He devoted more time to the construction of this novel than any of his others. Nabokov’s fiction is characterized by its linguistic playfulness. Nabokov’s best-known short story, “The Vane Sisters “, is famous in part for its acrostical final paragraph, in which the first letters of each word spell out a ghostly message from beyond the grave.

Nabokov’s stature as a literary critic is founded largely on his four-volume translation of and commentary on Aleksandr Pushkin’s Russian soul epic Eugene Onegin. That commentary ended with an appendix called Notes on Prosody which has developed a reputation of its own. This essay stemmed from his observation that while Pushkin’s iambic tetrameters had been a part of Russian literature for a fairly short two centuries, they were clearly understood by the Russian prosodists. On the other hand, he viewed the much older English iambic tetrameters as muddled and poorly documented. In his own words:

“I have been forced to invent a simple little terminology of my own, explain its application to English verse forms, and indulge in certain rather copious details of classification before even tackling the limited object of these notes to my translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, an object that boils down to very little — in comparison to the forced preliminaries — namely, to a few things that the non-Russian student of Russian literature must know in regard to Russian prosody in general and to Eugene Onegin in particular.”

  

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Caesar Vespasianus Augustus (November 18, CE 9 – June 23, 79), originally known as Titus Flavius Vespasianus and best known as Vespasian, was the emperor of Rome from 69 to 79.

He was founder of the Flavian dynasty and acceded the throne in the end of the Year of the four emperors. He was born in the Sabine country near Reate. His father Flavius Sabinus was a tax collector and money-lender on a small scale; his mother Vespasia Polla was the sister of a senator.

After having served with the army in Thrace and been quaestor in Crete and Cyrene, Vespasian rose to be aedile and praetor, having meanwhile married Flavia Domitilla, the daughter of an equestrian, by whom he had two sons, Titus and Domitian, afterwards emperors, and one daughter Domitilla. Both his wife and daughter died before he held a magistracy.

Having already served in Germany, he participated in the Roman invasion of Britain under the Emperor Claudius, where he distinguished himself in command of the Legio II Augusta under Aulus Plautius. He reduced Vectis or the Isle of Wight and penetrated to the borders of Somerset in England. In 51 he was for a brief space consul; in 63 he went as governor to Africa, where, according to Tacitus (ii.97), his rule was “infamous and odious”; according to Suetonius (Vesp. 4), “upright and, highly honourable”.

He went with Nero’s retinue to Greece, and in 66 was appointed to conduct the war in Judaea, which was threatening unrest throughout the East. According to Suetonius, a prophecy ubiquitous in the Eastern provinces claimed that from Judaea would come the future rulers of the world. Vespasian eventually believed that this prophecy applied to him, and found a number of omens and oracles and portents that reinforced this belief.

He also found encouragement in Licinius Mucianus, the governor of Syria; and although a strict disciplinarian, and reformer of abuses, Vespasian had a soldiery thoroughly devoted to him. All eyes in the East were now upon him; Mucianus and the Syrian legions were eager to support him; and while he was at Caesarea, he was proclaimed emperor (July 1, 69), first by the army in Egypt, and then by his troops in Judaea (July 11).

Nevertheless, Vitellius, the occupant of the throne, had on his side the veteran legions of Gaul and the Rhineland, Rome’s best troops. But the feeling in Vespasian’s favour quickly gathered strength, and the armies of Moesia, Pannonia and Illyricum soon declared for him, and made him in fact master of half of the Roman world.

His troops entered Italy on the north-east under the leadership of M. Antonius Primus, defeated the army of Vitellius at Bedriacum (or Betriacum) (which had awaited him in Mevania), sacked Cremona and advanced on Rome, which they entered after furious fighting and a frightful confusion, in which the Capitol was destroyed by fire.

On receiving the tidings of his rival’s defeat and death at Alexandria, new emperor at once forwarded supplies of urgently needed corn to Rome, along with an edict or a declaration of policy, in which he gave assurance of an entire reversal of the laws of Nero, especially those relating to treason. While in Egypt he visited the Temple of Serapis, where reportedly he experienced a vision, and later was confronted by two laborers who were convinced that he possessed a divine power which could work miracles.

Leaving the war in Judaea to his son Titus, he arrived at Rome in 70. He at once devoted his energies to repairing the evils caused by civil war. He restored discipline in the army, which under Vitellius had become utterly demoralized, and, with the co-operation of the Senate, put the government and the finances on a sound footing.

He renewed old taxes and instituted new, increased the tribute of the provinces, and kept a watchful eye upon the treasury officials. By his own example of simplicity of life, he put to shame the luxury and extravagance of the Roman nobles and initiated in many respects a marked improvement in the general tone of society.

As censor he reformed the Senatorial and Equestrian orders, removing unfit and unworthy members and promoting good and able men, among them Gnaeus Julius Agricola. At the same time, he made it more dependent upon the emperor, by exercising an influence upon its composition.

He altered the constitution of the Praetorian Guard, in which only Italians, formed into nine cohorts, were enrolled. In 70 a formidable rising in Gaul, headed by Claudius Civilis, was suppressed and the German frontier made secure; the Jewish War was brought to a close by Titus’s capture of Jerusalem, and in the following year, after the joint triumph of Vespasian and Titus, memorable as the first occasion on which a father and his son were thus associated together, the temple of Janus was closed, and the Roman world had rest for the remaining nine years of Vespasian’s reign. “The peace of Vespasian” passed into a proverb.

In 78 Agricola went to Britain, and both extended and consolidated the Roman dominion in that province, pushing his arms into North Wales and the Isle of Anglesey. In the following year Vespasian died, on June 23.

The avarice with which both Tacitus and Suetonius stigmatize Vespasian seems really to have been an enlightened economy, which, in the disordered state of the Roman finances, was an absolute necessity.

Vespasian could be liberal to impoverished senators and equestrians, to cities and towns desolated by natural calamity, and especially to men of letters and rhetors, several of whom he pensioned with salaries of as much as 1000 gold pieces a year. Quintilian is said to have been the first public teacher who enjoyed this imperial favor.

Pliny the Elder’s great work, the Natural History, was written during Vespasian’s reign, and dedicated to Vespasian’s son Titus. Some of the philosophers who talked idly of the good old times of the republic, and thus indirectly encouraged conspiracy, provoked him into reviving the obsolete penal laws against this profession, but only one, Helvidius Priscus, was put to death, and he had affronted the emperor by studied insults. “I will not kill a dog that barks at me,” were words honestly expressing the temper of Vespasian. Vespasian was indeed noted for mildness and a healthy sense of justice. For example, he helped his late adversary Vitellius’ daughter find a suitable husband and even provided her with the dowry. Much money was spent on public works and the restoration and beautifying of Rome: a new forum, the splendid temple of Peace, the public baths and the vast Colosseum.

To the last, Vespasian was a plain, blunt soldier, with a demonstrated strength of character and ability, and with a steady purpose to establish good order and secure the prosperity and welfare of his subjects. In his habits he was punctual and regular, transacting his business early in the morning, and enjoying his siesta after a drive.

He did not quite have the distinguished bearing looked for in an emperor. He was free in his conversation, and his humour, of which he had a good deal, was apt to take the form of rather coarse jokes. He could jest even in his last moments. “Alas, I think I’m turning into a God,” he whispered to those around him. There is something very characteristic in the exclamation he is said to have uttered in his last illness, “An emperor ought to die standing.”

  

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Vitus Jonassen Bering (also, less correctly, Behring) (August, 1681 – December 19, 1741) was a Danish-born navigator in the service of Russia, captain-komandor of the Russian Navy known among the Russian sailors as Ivan Ivanovich. Bering was born in the town of Horsens. After a voyage to the East Indies, he joined the Russian Navy in 1703, and served in the Baltic Fleet during the Great Northern War. In 1710-1712 he served in the Azov Sea Fleet and took part in the Russo-Turkish war .

He married a Russian woman, and in 1715 he made a brief visit to his hometown, never to see it again. A series of explorations of the north coast of Asia, the outcome of a far-reaching plan devised by Peter the Great, led up to Bering’s first voyage to Kamchatka. In 1725, under the auspices of the Russian government, he went overland to Okhotsk, crossed to Kamchatka, and built the ship Sviatoi Gavriil (St. Gabriel). In her he pushed northward in 1728, until he could no longer observe any extension of the land to the north, or its appearance to the east.

In the following year he made an abortive search for mainland eastward rediscovering one of the Diomede Islands (Ratmanov Island) observed earlier by Dezhnev. In summer of 1730 Bering returned to St. Petersburg. During the long trip through Siberia along the whole Asian continent he became very ill. Five of his children died during this trip. Bering was subsequently commissioned to a further expedition, and returned to Okhotsk in 1735.

He had the local craftsmen, Makar Rogachev and Andrey Kozmin, build two vessels, Sviatoi Piotr (St. Peter) and Sviatoi Pavel (St. Paul), in which he sailed off and in 1740 established the settlement of Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka. From there he led an expedition towards America in 1741. A storm separated the ships, but Bering sighted the southern coast of Alaska, and a landing was made at Kayak Island or in the vicinity. The second ship, under the command of Aleksei Chirikov, discovered the shores of the north-western America (Aleksander Archipelago of present day Alaska). These voyages of Bering and Chirikov were a major part of the Russian exploration efforts in the North Pacific known today as the Great Northern expedition .

Bering was forced by adverse conditions to return quickly, and discovered some of the Aleutian Islands on his way back. One of the sailors died and was buried on one of these islands which was named after him (Shumagin Island ). Bering became too ill to command his ship, which was at last driven to refuge on an uninhabited island in the Commander Islands group (Komandorskiye Ostrova) in the SW Bering Sea, where Bering himself and 28 men of his company died. This island bears his name. A storm shipwrecked Sv.

Piotr but the only surviving carpenter S. Starodubtsev with the help of the crew managed to build a smaller vessel out of the wreckage. The new vessel had the keel length of only 12.2 meters (40 feet) and it was also named Sv. Piotr. Out of 77 men aboard Sv. Piotr only 46 survived the hardships of the expedition which claimed its last victim just one day before coming into homeport. Sv. Piotr was in service for 12 years sailing between Kamchatka and Okhotsk till 1755. Its builder Starodubtsev returned home with governmental awards and later built several other seaworthy ships.

It was long before the value of Bering’s work was fully recognized; but Captain Cook was able to prove his accuracy as an observer. Nowadays, the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island and the Bering Land Bridge bear the Russian explorer’s name.

In August 1991, Bering’s grave and the graves of five other seamen were discovered by a Russian-Danish expedition. The remains were transported to Moscow where they were investigated by the forensic physicians who succeeded in recreating Bering’s appearance. Examination of Bering’s teeth showed no sign of scurvy, leading to the conclusion that he died of some other disease.

  

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Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (vyah-cheh-SLAHF mih-KHY-lo-vihch MOL-uh-tawf) (February 25, 1890 (O.S.) (March 9, 1890 (N.S.)) – November 8, 1986) was a Soviet politician and diplomat. Molotov and Stalin himself were the only senior revolutionary Bolsheviks to survive the Great Purges of the 1930s.

He was born in the village of Kukarka (now Sovetsk in Kirov Oblast), Russia, as Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Skryabin(he was a relative of the composer Alexander Scriabin). He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906 and took the pseudonym Molotov (from Russian: hammer). He was, along with Alexander Shlyapnikov, the senior Bolshevik in Petrograd at the time of the February Revolution as figures such as Lenin were still in exile. After what appears to be an odyssey through the landscape of geographic and political Russia including an important role in the October Revolution and editing the newspaper Pravda for a while, he started working under Joseph Stalin in 1922.

From December 19, 1930 to May 9, 1941, he was Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), in which capacity he was the head of government of the USSR, although this position was in practice subordinate to the General Secretary of the Communist Party.

During the drought in the Soviet Union of 1932-1933, which affected most grain-producing territories (Ukraine, Kuban, Volga region, Kazakhstan), Molotov was the head of the Extraordinary commission for grain delivery (khlebosdacha) in Ukraine. Despite the bad harvest and an epidemic of typhoid, he managed to collect 4.2 million tonnes of grain (of planned 4.6 million tonnes).

In May 1939 he became People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs (Foreign Minister), and he held both positions until Stalin took over the Sovnarkom chair two years later. It is believed that he was made foreign minister because his predecessor, Maxim Litvinov, was Jewish, and might thus have insulted the Germans by his role in negotiations. Molotov negotiated in parallel with both the West and Nazis to secure maximal territorial gain for Soviet Union. After British-French-Soviet talks held in August of 1939 failed, he negotiated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

In accordance with the pact, the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, after it had already been invaded from the west by Germany on September 1, and subsequently annexed the eastern part of the country. For the citizens of eastern Poland, this meant the beginning of mass arrests and deportations of “class enemies” to the eastern part of the Soviet Union. During this period, Molotov publicly expressed his satisfaction at the fall of Poland under both German and Soviet onslaughts, blaming the Polish state and its “landlords’ rule” for the oppression of ethnic minorities.

As a member of the Soviet politburo, Molotov approved of executions. For example, on March 5, 1940, the politburo signed an order of execution (prepared by Lavrenti Beria) of 25,700 members of the Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish prisoners of war. This became known as the Katyn massacre, which was vigorously denied by the Soviet Union.

During the period prior to the outbreak of war between the USSR and Germany in 1941, Molotov consistently annoyed the Germans with his pragmatic tenacity during negotiations, insisting on preserving or advancing Soviet interests in Eastern Europe, and not being deceived by idle German promises of concessions in other faraway parts of the world, such as India.

(According to a story later told by Stalin to Winston Churchill, when Ribbentrop was discussing dividing up the spoils of a soon-to-be-conquered British Empire, Molotov once responded by asking him why, if Britain was doomed, they were holding negotiations in an air raid shelter.) Later on, he also frustrated U.S President Franklin D. Roosevelt with his firm stance on issues during the war.

Hours after the German invasion on June 22, 1941, he gave a speech in which he stated that the attack was an act of unprovoked aggression and declared that the Soviet Union would fight until victory.

Molotov served as foreign minister until 1949, when he was replaced by Andrei Vyshinsky as a mark of falling out of Stalin’s favor’he was removed from the Politburo in 1952. His wife Polina Zhemchuzhina , a staunch Zionist and friend of Golda Meir, was arrested for treason in 1948 during what some have termed an anti-Semitic campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans”, which followed Israel’s siding against the USSR in the Cold War.

For reasons such as these, some have speculated that Molotov could have become a victim of a purge Stalin was suspected of planning in the last weeks of his life. Following Stalin’s death in 1953, he was reinstated in the Politburo (which was now called the Presidium) and served again as foreign minister until 1956, but soon found himself at odds with the reformist policies of Stalin’s eventual successor, Nikita Khrushchev, and was strongly opposed to Khrushchev’s 1956 denunciation of Stalin. In 1957, along with other top Stalinists such as Lazar Kaganovich (the so-called Anti-Party Group), he attempted a coup within the party to oust Khrushchev. When this failed, it provided Khrushchev with a pretext to demote Molotov to a series of increasingly irrelevant posts: first as Ambassador to Mongolia (1957-1960) and then as the permanent Soviet delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna (1960-1961). By 1964, he had been expelled from the party altogether.

Molotov was allowed to rejoin the party in 1984, but this was a purely symbolic gesture. By the time of his death (at the age of 96) in Moscow on November 8, 1986, he was the last surviving major participant in the events of 1917. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow.

Soldiers of the Finnish Army mockingly named the Molotov cocktail after him, as Molotov served as the Commissar for Foreign Affairs during the time of the Russo-Finnish War (1939-1940).

  

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Vanessa Paradis (born December 22 1972) is a French singer and actress. She was discovered on the TV show L’Ecole Des Fans . Vanessa recorded her first single “a Magie Des Surprises-Parties” (the magic of surprise parties) in 1985 and became famous with the song “Joe le Taxi” in 1987.

She is in a relationship with American actor Johnny Depp with whom she has a daughter, Lily Rose (born May 27, 1999), and a son, Jack (born April 9, 2002).

  

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Van Cliburn, (born July 12, 1934) is an American pianist who achieved worldwide recognition in 1958 when, at the age of 23, he won the first quadrennial Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow, at the height of the Cold War. Cliburn was born Harvey Lavan Cliburn, Jr. in Shreveport, Louisiana, and began taking piano lessons at the age of three from his mother, Rhilda Bee O’Bryan (who had been taught by Arthur Friedheim, a pupil of Franz Liszt).

When Cliburn was six, he and his family moved to Kilgore, Texas, and at twelve he won a statewide piano competition which enabled him to debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He entered The Juilliard School at age 17, and studied under Rhosa Levinne, who trained him in the tradition of the great Russian romanticists. At age 20, Cliburn won the prestigious Levintritt Award, and made his Carnegie Hall debut.

But it was his recognition in Moscow which propelled him to international fame. The First International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition was an event designed to demonstrate Soviet cultural superiority during the Cold War, on the heels of their technological victory of the Sputnik launch only weeks before. Cliburn’s luminous virtuousity in his competition finale performances of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 earned him a standing ovation which lasted a full eight minutes. The Soviet judges were compelled to ask Premier Nikita Khrushchev for permission to give the first prize to an American.

“Is he the best?” Khrushchev asked them. “Then give him the prize!” Cliburn returned home to a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the only time that honour has been accorded a classical musician. TIME put him on their cover, proclaiming him as “The Texan Who Conquered Russia.” RCA signed him to an exclusive contract, and his subsequent recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 , became the first classical album to sell a million copies. It was the best-selling classical album in the world for more than a decade, eventually becoming triple-platinum. In 1962, Cliburn became the artistic advisor for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition . The competition was founded by a group of Fort Worth, Texas music teachers and volunteers, and its prestige now rivals that of the Tchaikovsky Competition.

Cliburn performed and recorded through the 1970s, and in 1978, after the deaths of his father and manager, began a hiatus from public life. In 1987, he was invited to perform at the White House for President Reagan and Soviet Premier Gorbechev, and afterwards was invited to open the 100th anniversary season of Carnegie Hall. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and, in October of 2004, the Russian Friendship Medal, the two highest civilian awards of the two countries. Now at age 70, he still gives a limited number of performances every year, to critical and popular acclaim.

  

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Vaughn Monroe (October 7, 1911 – May 21, 1973) was a singer, trumpeter and big band leader, most popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Monroe was born in Akron, Ohio. He formed a band in Boston in 1940 and became its principal vocalist.

His signature tune was “Racing with the Moon”. He also had hits with “Ghost Riders in the Sky”, “There I’ve Said It Again”, “Ballerina”, “Let It Show, Let It Snow”, and “Mule Train”. One lost opportunity – he turned down the chance to record “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

He was tall and handsome which helped him as a band leader and singer, as well as in Hollywood, although he did not pursue a movie and television career with vigor. He was sometimes called ‘the baritone with muscles’. He was admired by some and derided by others for both his singing and his persona. He had a pleasant baritone voice that wasn’t always quite good enough for the songs he sang, according to his critics. He was considered sincere, steady, and down-to-earth by some; pompous and square by others. In spite of these mixed opinions, he had a very successful musical career, with a large number of fans.

Monroe died in Stuart, Florida.

  

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Vannevar Bush (March 11, 1890-June 30, 1974) was an American scientist. Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, Bush was educated at Tufts College, graduating in 1913. He joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1919, and was a professor there from 1923-32.

He constructed a Differential Analyser, an analog computer that could solve differential equations with as many as 18 independent variables, based on Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine. An offshoot of the Differential Analyser was the birth of digital circuit design theory by one of Bush’s graduate students, Claude Shannon.

Bush was president of the Carnegie Institute of Washington in 1939 and in the same year appointed chair of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. In 1940, Bush became chairman of the National Defense Research Committee and in 1941 director of Office of Scientific Research and Development , which controlled the Manhattan Project and coordinated wartime scientific research during World War II. He recommended the creation of what would become the National Science Foundation in order to cement the ties between science, industry and the military which had been forged during the war. Bush was also a cofounder of the defense contractor Raytheon.

He invented the concept of what he called the memex in the 1930s, a microfilm-based “device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.” In retrospect, the memex was severely flawed because Bush did not understand information science, computers, or microfilm very well. He despised the humanities and social sciences (he badly weakened American anthropology when he choked off a large part of its funding in the 1930s), and refused to talk to the librarians who could have helped refine his ideas. But the memex is still an important accomplishment, because it directly inspired the development of hypertext.

After fantasizing about the potential of microfilm for several years, Bush set out his thoughts at length in the essay “As We May Think” in Atlantic Monthly in 1945. In the article, Bush predicted that, “Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.” A few months later (November 19th 1945) Life magazine published an article with several illustrations showing what a memex machine, and its companion devices, could look like. This version was subsequently read by both Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart and inspired them to independently formulate the various ideas that became hypertext.

Vannevar Bush plays an important role in many UFO conspiracy theories as the head of Majestic 12, an organization supposedly formed by Dwight Eisenhower to investigate and later cover up an alien crash in Roswell, New Mexico.

The Vannevar Bush Award was created by the National Science Foundation in 1980 to honor contributions to public service.

Vannevar Bush has an unfortunate eponym: vannevar [1] owing to his habit of overestimating technological challenges. He asserted that a nuclear weapon could not be made small enough to fit in the nose of a missile as in an ICBM. He also predicted “electronic brains” the size of the Empire State Building with a Niagara Falls-scale cooling system.

His name was pronounced Van-NEE-var. as in “receiver”.

  

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Vittorio Emanuele Orlando (May 19 1860 – December 1 1952) was an Italian diplomat and political figure. A liberal, he served in various roles in the governments of Antonio Salandra and Paolo Boselli. After the Italian military disaster at Caporetto on October 25, 1917, which led to the fall of the Boselli government, Orlando became Prime Minister, and continued in that role through the rest of the war.

Although, as prime minister, he was the head of the Italian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Orlando’s inability to speak English and his weak political position at home allowed the conservative foreign minister, Sidney Sonnino, to play a dominant role. Orlando resigned on 23 June 1919, following his inability to acquire Fiume for Italy in the peace settlement.

  

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Vivian Stanshall (March 21 1943 – March 5 1995) was an English musician, writer, wit, and raconteur and is probably best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. He is also well known for his weird take on British society, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End . Born Victor Anthony Stanshall in Shillingford, Oxfordshire.

Soon after, the family moved to Walthamstow, on the borders of East London and Essex, where Viv lived happily with his mother, surviving the bombing while his dad was away in the RAF. When his father returned, things at home became fraught. Although working class, Mr. Stanshall aspired to middle class values, seeing his son as potential public school material and laying great emphasis on sportsmanship. Viv, though, could not have been less interested in such pursuits. Art, Music & Literature were what thrilled him – and appalled his dad.

Thus, Viv became a walking schism: at home, he would speak ‘properly’, as his father expected him to; with his schoolfriends, to avoid getting beaten up for being ‘posh’, it was broad cockney. As part of his anti-parental rebellion, he joined a gang of local Teddy Boys. The polished vowels kept leaking out, though, and consequently they looked upon him as something of an amusing freak.

In his teenage years, the family moved to the Essex resort of Southend on Sea. Here Viv managed to get employment doing various jobs at the ‘Kursaal’ funfair. He also worked as a bingo caller and spent the winter months painting the fairground attractions.

After a period in the merchant navy, Stanshall enrolled at Central School of Art, in London, and together with fellow students Rodney Slater and Roger Ruskin-Spear, plus Neil Innes, who was studying music at Goldsmiths College, decided to form a band. The name came out of a word game involving cutting up sentences and juxtaposing the fragments to form new ones. One of the combinations that came out of this exercise was “Bonzo Dog/Dada”.

Thus was formed the famous/notorious Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band -later abbreviated to the Bonzo Dog Band. Their early material consisted of anarchic re-workings of old British novelty songs, found on 78 records bought from flea-markets. It was all in the performance: as front man, Stanshall sang, played a variety of instruments and on a good night would also perform a prolonged and hilarious fully-clothed strip mime, culminating in some spectacular tit-juggling. His very non-PC Jesus joke was also a highlight of the act.

For a while they existed as a semi-pro outfit playing the college circuit, but it wasn’t long before they were at it full-time. Over the next half-decade the band toured and recorded several albums, the success of which led to a tour in the US. It was so successful that they were booked for another US tour soon after. Inbetween the two, however, something happened in Vivian’s life to bring about a change in his personality. No one seems to know just what that something was – at least, none of his fellow Bonzos claim to know – but by the start of the second tour, he was on very large doses of tranquilizers, prescribed to treat some kind of mental illness. But the work carried on. The band had a punishing schedule, often playing more than one gig per evening.

After six years of gruelling hard work, they decided to call it a day – as much from sheer tiredness as anything else. Stanshall went on to form various short-lived groups such as Bonzo Dog Freaks, featuring the guitar talents of the rotund Bubs White, and ‘Big Grunt’.

Viv’s next big success came with ‘Rawlinson End’. It was first mentioned in a Bonzo Dog Band song of the same name. In the 1970s Stanshall recorded numerous sessions for BBC Radio 1’s John Peel show which elaborated, with a fine mixture of eloquence and irreverence, on the weird and wonderful adventures of the inebriate and politically-incorrect Sir Henry Rawlinson (“If I had all the money I’d spent on drink…I’d spend it on drink.”), his dotty wife Great Aunt Florrie, his “unusual” brother Hubert (who, for speed, stature and far-seeing habitually goes on stilts), old Scrotum the wrinkled retainer, Mrs. E, the rambling and unhygienic cook, and other inhabitants of the crumbling stately home Rawlinson’s End and its environs. BBC Radio 4 fished some of these recordings out of the vault for a very late-night repeat at Christmas 1996, but there seems to be little chance of a commercial release.

An LP, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, which reworked some of the material from the Peel sessions, appeared in 1978.

A sepia-tinted black and white film version, starring Trevor Howard as Sir Henry and Stanshall himself as Hubert, followed in 1980. It was also based on the Peel recordings, with many variations from the LP. Some of the music was provided by Stanshall’s friend Steve Winwood.

A book of the same name by Stanshall, illustrated with stills from the film, was released in the 1980s. It was nominally a film novelization, but was actually distilled from all the various versions of the story, including a good deal of material that was not used in the film. A projected second book, The Eating at Rawlinson End, sadly never appeared.

A second album, Sir Henry at Ndidi’s Kraal (1983), recounts Sir Henry’s disastrous African expedition, but disappointingly omits the rest of the Rawlinson clan.

Sir Henry’s final appearance was in a TV commercial for Ruddle’s Real Ale (c. 1994), where he is played by a cross-dressing Dawn French, presiding over a family banquet at a long table. Stanshall reprises the role of Hubert, reciting a weird poem loosely based on Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat, at the end of which all the diners produce oars and row the table offstage.

Viv was often introduced as one of “Britain’s greatest eccentrics”, but this was a tag he disliked. It made it sound as if he were acting in some way, and he was almost militant in affirming that he was just “being me”. However, it is not hard to see why he received the label: of their first meeting, in a large Irish pub, Neil Innes said, “He was quite plump in those days – he had Billy Bunter check trousers and a Victorian frock coat, pince-nez glasses, carried a euphonium and wore pink rubber ears.”

For a few years in the mid-Eighties, Vivian lived and worked in Bristol on The Old Profanity Showboat. A creation of his wife’s, the ship saw the debut of Vivian and Ki Longfellow-Stanshall’s comic opera Stinkfoot . Vivian wrote twenty seven original songs for Stinkfoot, sharing some of the lyric writing with Ki. People came from all over Europe to see the thing…and some from as far away as America.

Stanshall’s refined voice won him a great deal of work for commercial voice-overs, including a Cadbury’s Creme Eggs campaign that included a reworking of the Bonzos song “Mister Slater’s Parrot”, under the title of “Mister Cadbury’s Parrot”.

He collaborated on numerous projects including Robert Calvert’s Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, appeared with Grimms and The Rutles, as well as working with The Alberts and The Temperance Seven on an occasional basis. He also wrote the lyrics for two of the songs on Steve Winwood’s hit album Arc of a Diver.

Other solo albums were Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead ([1974]) and Teddy Boys Don’t Knit ([1981]).

His life was dogged by depression and a drinking problem. He had several spells in hospital in an attempt to stop or control his drinking (this was before modern day notions of rehab). He was also prescribed valium, which – he later reported – seemed to have made things worse, simply adding another addiction.

He was married twice, in 1968 to Monica Peiser (divorced 1975, they had a son, Rupert, born 1968); and in 1980 to Pamela (Vivian dreamed her name was Ki, and as Ki she is now known) Longfellow. Ki and Vivian had a daughter, Silky, born 1979. On March 6th, 2004, Silky Longfellow-Stanshall gave birth to a son she’s named Ty Vivian.

At one time he owned a houseboat on the Thames, which sank with all his possessions aboard. He was later arrested for damaging a neighbor’s houseboat.

1991 made a 15-minute autobiographical piece called Vivian Stanshall: The Early Years, aka Crank, for BBC2’s The Late show, in which he confessed to having been terrified of his late father, who had always disapproved of him. A later programme for BBC Radio 4, Vivian Stanshall: Essex Teenager to Renaissance Man (1994) included an interview with his mother in which she insisted that his father had loved him, but Stanshall was mortified that he had never shown it.

Stanshall was found dead after a fire at his North London flat, seemingly started by Stanshall falling asleep while smoking in bed. Fuelled by brandy fumes, the cigarette had set fire to his long ginger beard.

A one-hour television documentary, Vivian Stanshall: The Canyons of his Mind, was broadcast on BBC Four in June 2004. In common with many recent BBC documentaries, this was made in widescreen and all of the illustrative footage, which was shot in standard ratio, was cropped to fit.

  

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Valentino Rossi (born 16 February, 1979, Urbino, Italy) is a multiple motorcycle MotoGP world champion.

Following his father, Graziano Rossi, Rossi started racing in Grand Prix’s in 1996 for Aprilia in the 125cc category and won his first world championship the following year. From there he moved up to the 250cc category, again with Aprilia, and he won the championship in 1999.

Rossi then moved to the 500cc class, to win in 2001 on a two-stroke Honda NSR. He repeated the success in the new MotoGP class in 2002 and 2003 riding a four-stroke Honda RC211V. For 2004, Rossi moved to Yamaha, for whom he then proceeded to win the MotoGP title in his first year with them. He is only the second rider to win consecutive world titles for different manufacturers.

Rossi lives in London.

He is famous for using the Number 46 only, the racing number of his father, his outgoing behaviour and his intense rivalry with fellow MotoGP rider, Max Biaggi .

Championships

1997 – World champion, 125 cc class.
1999 – World champion, 250 cc class.
2001 – World champion, 500 cc class.
2002 – World champion, MotoGP class.
2003 – World champion, MotoGP class.
2004 – World champion, MotoGP class.

  

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Voltairine de Cleyre (November 17, 1866-June 6, 1912) was, according to Emma Goldman, “the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced”; yet, even among most anarchists, she is today almost completely unknown. Born on November 17, 1866, in the small town of Leslie, Michigan, as a teenager she was forced into a Catholic convent, an experience that had the effect of pushing her towards atheism rather than Christianity. Once emerged from the convent, she identified with the free thinkers movement and with the socialism of Clarence Darrow.

After the hanging of the Haymarket martyrs in 1887, however, she became an anarchist, and remained so throughout her entire life. She was close to and inspired by Dyer D. Lum , “her teacher, her confidant, her comrade”. On June 12, 1890 she gave birth to a son, Harry, fathered by freethinker James B. Elliot . De Cleyre was known as an excellent speaker and writer – in the opinion of Paul Avrich, her biographer, she was “a greater literary talent than any other American anarchist” – and as a tireless advocate for the anarchist cause, whose “religious zeal,” according to Goldman, “stamped everything she did…. Her whole nature was that of an ascetic.” She believed in an “anarchism without adjectives”, reportedly declaring on one occasion, “I am an Anarchist, simply, without economic labels attached.”

Throughout her life she was plagued by illness and depression, attempting suicide on at least one occasion and suriviving an assassination attempt on December 9, 1902. Her assailant, Herman Helcher, was a former pupil who she later forgave, writing “It would be an outrage against civilisation if he were sent to jail for an act which was the product of a diseased brain”.

Voltairine de Cleyre died on June 6, 1912, in Chicago, Illinois. A collection of her speeches, The First Mayday: The Haymarket Speeches, 1895-1910, was published by the Libertarian Book Club in 1980 and in 2004, AK Press released The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader, edited by AJ Brigati.

  

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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin original name Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (April 10 (April 22, New Style), 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union and the founder of the ideology of Leninism.

“Lenin” was one of his revolutionary pseudonyms. He is believed to have created it to show his opposition to Georgi Plekhanov who used the pseudonym Volgin, after the Volga River; Ulyanov picked the Lena which is longer and flows in the opposite direction. He is sometimes erroneously referred to in the West as “Nikolai Lenin”, though he has never been known as such in Russia.

Early life

Born in Simbirsk, Russia, Lenin was the son of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831 – 1886), a Russian civil service official who worked for increased democracy and free universal education in Russia, and his liberal wife Maria Alexandrovna Blank (1835 – 1916). Like many Russians, he was of mixed ethnic and religious ancestry. He had Kalmyk ancestry through his paternal grandparents, Volga German ancestry through his maternal grandmother, who was a Lutheran, and Jewish ancestry through his maternal grandfather (converted to Christianity). Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) himself was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church.

Vladimir distinguished himself in the study of Latin and Greek. In May of 1887 his eldest brother Alexander Ulyanov was hanged for participation in a plot threatening the life of Tsar Alexander III. This radicalized Vladimir and later that year he was arrested, and expelled from Kazan University for participating in student protests. He continued to study independently and by 1891 had earned a license to practice law.

Revolutionary

Rather than settle into a legal career, he became more involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts and the study of Marxism, much of it in St. Petersburg. On December 7, 1895, he was arrested and held by authorities for an entire year, then exiled to the village of Shushenskoye in Siberia.

In July 1898, he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, who was a socialist activist. In April 1899, he published the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia . In 1900, his exile ended. He travelled in Russia and elsewhere in Europe and published the paper Iskra as well as other tracts and books related to the revolutionary movement.

He was active in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), and in 1903 he led the Bolshevik faction after a split with the Mensheviks that was partly inspired by his pamphlet What is to be Done? [2]. In 1906 he was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP. In 1907 he moved to Finland for security reasons. He continued to travel in Europe and participated in many socialist meetings and activities, including the Zimmerwald Conference of 1915.

On April 16, 1917, he returned to Petrograd following the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, and took a leading role within the Bolshevik movement, publishing the April Theses [3]. After a failed workers’ uprising in July, Lenin fled to Finland for safety. He returned in October, inspiring an armed revolution with the slogan “All Power to the Soviets!”, against the Provisional Government led by Kerensky. His ideas of government were expressed in his essay “State and Revolution” [4], which called for a new form of government based on the worker’s councils, or soviets.

Head of the Soviet state

On November 8, Lenin was elected as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars by the Russian Soviet Congress. Faced with the threat of German invasion, Lenin argued that Russia should immediately sign a peace treaty. Other Bolshevik leaders, such as Bukharin, advocated continuing the war as a means of fomenting revolution in Germany. Trotsky, who led the negotiations, advocated an intermediate position, calling for a peace treaty only on the conditions that no territorial gains on either side be consolidated. After the negotiations collapsed, Germany launched an invasion that resulted in the loss of much of Russia’s western territory. As a result of this turn of events, Lenin’s position consequently gained the support of the majority in the Bolshevik leadership, and Russia signed the eventual Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, under disadvantageous terms (March 1918).

In accepting that the soviets were the only legitimate form of a worker’s government, Lenin shut down the Russian Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks lost the vote there, but had majority support in the Congress of Soviets. Initially, they formed a coalition government with the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries. However, their coalition collapsed after the Social Revolutionaries opposed the Brest-Litovsk treaty, and they joined other parties in seeking to overthrow the government of the soviets. The situation degenerated, with non-Bolshevik parties (including some of the socialist groups) actively seeking the overthrow of the soviet government. Lenin responded by (unsuccessfully) trying to shut down their activities.

On August 30, 1918, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, approached Lenin after he’d spoken at a meeting and was on his way to his car. She called out to Lenin, and when he turned to answer, fired three shots, two of which struck him in the shoulder and lung. Lenin was taken to his private apartment in the Kremlin, and refused to venture to a hospital, believing other assassins would be waiting there. Doctors were summoned, but decided that it was too dangerous to remove the bullets. Lenin eventually recovered, though his health declined from this point, and it is believed that the incident contributed to his later strokes.

In March, 1919, Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders met with revolutionary socialists from around the world and formed the Communist International. Members of the Communist International, including Lenin and the Bolsheviks themselves, broke off from the broader socialist movement. From that point onwards, they would be known as communists. In Russia, the Bolshevik Party was renamed the “Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”, which eventually became the CPSU.

Meanwhile, a civil war raged across Russia. A wide variety of political movements and their supporters took up arms to support or overthrow the soviet government. Although many different factions were involved in the civil war, the two main forces were the Red Army (communists) and the White Army (monarchists). Foreign powers such as France and Britain also intervened in this war (on behalf of the White Army), and Poland started the Polish-Soviet War by invading the Ukraine.

Eventually, the Red Army won the civil war (in 1920), and peace was also signed with Poland in 1921. The long years of war had taken their toll on Russia, however, and much of the country lay in ruins. In March 1921, Lenin replaced the policy of War communism (which had been used during the civil war) with the New Economic Policy (NEP), in an attempt to rebuild industry and especially agriculture. But the same month saw the suppression of an uprising among sailors at Kronstadt (“the Kronstadt rebellion”).

Premature Death

Lenin’s health had already been severely damaged due to the intolerable strains of revolution and war. The assassination attempt earlier in his life also added to his health problems. In May 1922, Lenin had his first stroke. He was left partially paralyzed (on his right side) and his role in government declined. After the second stroke in December, he resigned from active politics. In March 1923 he suffered the third stroke and was left bedridden and no longer able to speak.

Lenin died of complications of the fourth stroke on January 21, 1924. The official cause given for Lenin’s death was cerebral arteriosclerosis , or a stroke, but out of the 27 physicians who treated him only 8 signed onto that conclusion in his autopsy report. Therefore, several other theories regarding his death have been put forward. For example, a posthumous diagnosis by two psychiatrists and a neurologist recently published in the European Journal of Neurology claimed to show that Lenin died from syphilis.

The city of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor; this remained the name of the city until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it reverted to its original name, St Petersburg.

After his first stroke, Lenin published a number of papers indicating future directions for the government. Most famous of these is Lenin’s Testament, which criticised Joseph Stalin, who had been the Communist Party’s general secretary since April 1922, claiming that he had “unlimited authority concentrated in his hands” and suggesting that “comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post”. Many of these papers were suppressed for decades as Stalin and his supporters gained control (following a brief power struggle with Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition after Lenin’s death).

During the early 1920s the Russian movement of cosmism was quite popular and there was an intent to cryogenically preserve Lenin’s body in order to revive him in the future. Necessary equipment was purchased abroad, but for a variety of reasons the plan was not realised. Instead his body was embalmed and placed on permanent exhibition in the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow.

Despite Lenin’s expressed wish shortly before death that no memorials be created for him, various politicians sought to better their own position vicariously by association with Lenin after his death, and his character was elevated to almost mythical status, with statue after monument after memorial springing up in his honor.

Lenin’s brain study

Lenin’s brain was removed before his body was embalmed. The Soviet government commissioned the well-known German neuroscientist Oskar Vogt to study Lenin’s brain and to locate the precise location of the brain cells that are responsible for genius. The Institute of Brain was created in Moscow for this purpose. Vogt published a paper on the brain in 1929 where he reported that some pyramidal neurons in the third layer of Lenin’s cerebral cortex were very large. However the conclusion of its relevance to genius was contested. Vogt’s work was considered unsatisfactory by the Soviets. Further research was continued by Soviet team, but the work on Lenin’s brain was no longer advertised.

Modern anatomy no longer thinks that morphology alone cannot be decisive in the functioning of the brain.

  

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Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko (born 23 February 1954) is a Ukrainian politician, former Prime Minister of Ukraine, leader of the Our Ukraine (Nasha Ukrayina) political coalition, and the main opposition candidate in the October-November 2004 Ukrainian presidential election.

Biography

Yushchenko was born in the village of Khoruzhivka in Sums’ka oblast’, into the family of a teacher. He studied economics in Ternopil’ and afterwards worked as a rural accountant in Ivano-Frankivs’ka oblast’. In 1976, he was hired in Sums’ka oblast’s branch of the USSR State Bank. He was later promoted to the post of deputy chairman of the Ukraine Agro-Industrial Bank in Kiev.

In 1993, he started working in the newly-formed National Bank of Ukraine and became its Head in 1997. As such, he played an important part in the creation of Ukraine’s national currency, the hryvnia, and the establishment of a modern regulating system for commercial banking. He also successfully overcame a debilitating wave of hyper-inflation that hit the country and managed to defend the value of the currency following the 1998 financial crisis in Russia.

In December 1999, Yushchenko was nominated as Prime Minister by President Leonid Kuchma and was ratified in this post by an overwhelming majority of 296-12 in parliament. Significant economic progress was made during Yushchenko’s cabinet service, though critics argue that this was made possible by the general situation of the economy, and was not the result of his actions. Soon, his government (particularly, deputy prime minister Yuliya Tymoshenko) became embroiled in a confrontation with influential coal-mining and natural gas industry leaders.

The conflict resulted in a 2001 no-confidence vote by the parliament, which was mainly the work of Communists, who had opposed Yushchenko’s economic policies, and centerist groups associated with the country’s powerful “oligarchs”. The vote was carried by 263 to 69 and resulted in Yushchenko’s removal from office. The fall of his government was viewed with dismay by many Ukrainians; four million votes were gathered in support of a petition supporting him and opposing the parliamentary vote and a 10,000-strong demonstration was held in Kiev.

In 2002, Yushchenko became the leader of the Our Ukraine (Nasha Ukrayina) political coalition, which received a plurality of seats in the parliamentary election that year. However, the number of seats won wasn’t enough for a majority, and the efforts to form it together with other opposition parties failed. Since then, Yushchenko has remained the leader and public face of the Our Ukraine group (Ukrainian: fraktsiya “Nasha Ukrayina”). He is widely regarded as the leader of anti-president opposition in the government, since other opposition parties are less influential and have fewer seats in the parliament.

Yushchenko is married to Kateryna Yushchenko-Chumachenko (his second wife). She is a Ukrainian-American born in Chicago and a former official with the U.S. State Department, where she worked as a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. Opponents of Yushchenko have criticized her for remaining a U.S. citizen. During the recent election campaign, Kateryna was accused of exerting the influence of the U.S. government on her husband’s decisions, as an employee of the U.S. government or even a CIA agent. She had earlier been accused by Russian television journalist Mikhail Leontyev of leading a U.S. project to help Yushchenko seize power in Ukraine; in January 2002, she won a libel case against him. Ukraine’s pro-government Inter television channel repeated Leontyev’s allegations in 2001 but in January 2003 she won a libel case against the channel as well.

The Yushchenkos have five children: three daughters and two sons.

Yushchenko’s main hobbies are Ukrainian traditional culture (including folk ceramics and archeology) and mountaineering.

Political portrait and 2004 presidential election

Since the end of his term as prime minister, Yushchenko has become a charismatic political figure and he is popular among Ukrainians in the western and central regions of the country. As of 2001-2004, his rankings in popularity polls were higher than those of the current president, Leonid Kuchma.[4]

As a politician, Viktor Yushchenko is widely perceived as a mixture of West-oriented and moderate Ukrainian nationalist. He is also an advocate of massive privatization of the economy. His opponents (and allies) sometimes criticize him for indecision and failure to reveal his position, while advocates argue that these are the signs of Yushchenko’s commitment to teamwork, consensus, and negotiation. He is also often accused of being unable to form a united and strong team that is free of inner quarrels. One of his powerful backers is Yulia Timoshenko, who served time in jail for fraud charges related to privatization of gas.

In 2004, as President Kuchma’s term came to an end, Yushchenko announced that he was an independent candidate for president. His major rival was Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Since his term as prime minister, Yushchenko has slightly modernized his political platform, adding social partnership and other liberal slogans to older ideas of European integration, including Ukraine joining NATO, and fighting corruption. Supporters of Yushchenko are organized in the “Syla Narodu” (“Power of the People”) electoral coalition, which is led by himself and his political ally Yuliya Tymoshenko, with the Our Ukraine coalition being the main constituent force.

Yushchenko’s campaign was built on face-to-face communication with the voters, since the government prevented most major TV channels from providing equal coverage to the candidates. Meanwhile, his rival, Yanukovych, frequently appeared in the news.

The campaign was often bitter, controversial, and violent, with accusations of “dirty tricks” from both sides. Yushchenko became seriously ill after dining with the head of the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, the Russian successor to the Soviet state security service known as the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti) in early September 2004, and he was flown to Vienna’s Rodolfinerhaus clinic for treatment. He was diagnosed with “acute pancreatitis, accompanied by interstitial edematous changes”, said to be due to “a serious viral infection and chemical substances which are not normally found in food products”. In other words, poisoning, which Yushchenko has claimed was the work of agents of the government. However, this accusation has yet to be proven. After the illness, his face became heavily disfigured, bloated, and pockmarked.

According to British toxicologist John Henry, of St. Mary’s Hospital in London, the marks on Yushchenko’s face are chloracne, a characteristic symptom of dioxin poisoning. This claim is disputed by other scientists, who have suggested that it might be the result of rosacea, but this theory cannot explain the severe internal medical problems Yushchenko suffers from. The Yanukovych campaign have claimed that the “poisoning” was caused by eating bad sushi. On 8 December 2004, Dr Nikolai Korpan, who treated Yushchenko in Vienna at the, announced his finding that Yushchenko had been “deliberately” poisoned, and that the specific poison will be identified within days.

The initial vote, held on 31 October 2004, saw Yushchenko obtaining 39.87% in front of Yanukovich with 39.32%. As no candidate reached the 50% margin required for outright victory, a second round of run-off voting was held on 21 November 2004. Although a 75% voter turnout was recorded, observers reported many irregularities and abuses across the country. Judging by the exit poll results, he won voting in western and central provinces of the country.

The alleged electoral fraud, combined with the fact that the exit polls recorded a result (an 11% margin of victory for Yushchenko in one poll) so radically different from the final vote tally (a 3% margin of victory for Yanukovych), has caused Yushchenko and his supporters to refuse to recognize the results. Thus far, they have organized rallies across the nation, including a large, continuous demonstration in Kiev’s Independence Square, and have implemented a large-scale general strike amongst their supporters. Several municipal governments, including those of Kiev and Lviv, Yushchenko’s stronghold, have announced that they will not recognize the authority of a Yanukovych presidency and a massive protest occurred on 23 November 2004 in front of the headquarters of the Verkhovna Rada.

During the rally, tens of thousands of Yushchenko’s supporters filled the streets outside the building, holding orange flags, the color of Yushchenko’s coalition, and chanting his name. Inside the Verkhovna Rada, the opposition leader took a symbolic oath of office in front of legislative supporters shouting, “Bravo, Yushchenko!”

Shortly thereafter, one of Yushchenko’s deputies announced that half of the estimated 200,000 people protesting in Independence Square were asked to march on the building housing the president’s administration, where they were to lay what he called a “peaceful siege”. As thousands of his supporters filled the streets around the building, Yushchenko and a group of his closest aides left the Verkhovna Rada and marched there. Reports indicated that they had entered the building and had begun negotiations with President Kuchma, which were expected to last well into 24 November 2004.

Instead, the talks were cancelled either late at night on 23 November 2004 or early in the morning on 24 November 2004. While it is not clear who cancelled the negotiations, it is clear that Yushchenko has not conceded defeat. That morning, he made a speech in Independence Square in which he called for his supporters across the nation to engage in strikes and sit-ins with the intention of paralyzing the government and forcing Kuchma and Yanukovych to concede defeat. He labelled this move the “Orange Revolution” and announced that a detailed plan for these events would be released by his campaign on 25 November 2004.

Ukraine’s parliament passed a resolution on 27 November 2004 that the presidential run-off vote was invalid and failed to reflect the will of voters. It also passed a resolution of no confidence in the Central Elections Commission based on allegations of irregularities, and finally a vote of no confidence in the government itself. Although the votes were not binding, they may lead to new elections.

  

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Virginia Katherine McMath was born on July 16, 1911 & died on April 25, 1995, better known as Ginger Rogers, was an American actress and dancer. She is most remembered as Fred Astaire’s romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of ten all-singing all-dancing Hollywood musicals, but her acting career spanned over thirty years.

Her first roles were in a trio of short films made in 1929 – Night in the Dormitory, A Day of a Man of Affairs, and Campus Sweethearts. In 1939, she played opposite David Niven in Bachelor Mother. In 1940 Ginger Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her starring role in Kitty Foyle.

She was a conservative Republican politically, and lived for much of her life with her mother, Lela Owens McMath Rogers (1891-1977), a Christian Scientist who was a newspaper reporter, scriptwriter, movie producer, one of the first women to enlist in the Marine Corps, and a founder of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. This close mother-daughter relationship has been proffered to explain at least in part Rogers’s history of marital disappointment.

She married, firstly, on March 29, 1929, her dancing partner, Jack Pepper (real name Edward Jackson Culpepper); they divorced in 1931, having separated soon after the wedding. In 1934, she married her second husband, actor Lew Ayres (1908-1996); they separated quickly and were divorced in 1941. In 1943, she married her third husband, Jack Briggs , a Marine; they divorced in 1949. In 1953, she married her fourth husband, lawyer Jacques Bergerac (16 years her junior, he became an actor and then a cosmetics company executive); they divorced in 1957 and he soon remarried actress Dorothy Malone. In 1961, she married her fifth husband, director and producer William Marshall, but separated from him within weeks of their marriage, eventually divorcing him in 1969.

Ginger Rogers died in 1995 and was interred in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.

The Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford, Oregon is named in her honor.

Quotations about Rogers

“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, and she did it backwards and in high heels.” Faith Whittlesey , former US ambassador to Switzerland. Responsibility for this quote also has been traced to a 1982 Frank and Ernest cartoon.

“Fred gave Ginger class, and Ginger gave Fred sex.” Katharine Hepburn, actress. Variants include “Astaire gave her class, and Rogers gave him sex” and “He gave her class, and she gave him sex.”

  

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Vladimir Horowitz (October 1, 1903 (or 1904)-November 5, 1989) was a classical pianist. His use of colors, technique and the excitement of his playing are virtually unrivalled, and his performances of works as diverse as those of Domenico Scarlatti and Alexander Scriabin were equally legendary. Detractors are quick to point out that his output is uniformly “Horowitzian” and sometimes mannered, and often too much so to be true to the composer’s intentions.

Even so he has a huge and passionate following and is generally regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time. Born in Berdichev in what is now Ukraine, Horowitz had piano lessons from an early age, initially from his mother, who was herself a professional pianist. In 1912 he entered the Kiev Conservatory, leaving in 1919, and playing the third piano concerto of Rachmaninoff at his graduation. His first solo recital followed in 1920.

His star rapidly rose – he soon began to tour Russia, and in 1926 made his first appearance outside his home country, in Berlin. He later played in Paris, London and New York City, and it was in the United States that he eventually settled in 1940. He became a United States citizen in 1944.

In 1932 he played for the first time with the conductor Arturo Toscanini in a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (the Emperor concerto). The two went on to appear together many times, both on stage and on record. In 1933, Horowitz married Wanda Toscanini , the conductor’s daughter.

Despite receiving rapturous receptions at his recitals, Horowitz became increasingly unsure of his abilities as a pianist. Several times he withdrew from public performances, and it is said that on several occasions, the only thing that stopped him from cancelling recitals at the last moment was the persuasiveness of his wife. After 1970 he gave solo recitals only rarely.

Horowitz made many recordings, starting in 1928 upon his arrival in the United States and ending right before his death in 1989. His early recordings were made for EMI, the most notable of which is his 1930 recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Albert Coates and the London Symphony Orchestra, the first known recording of that piece. In the 1940s and 1950s, Horowitz recorded for RCA Victor. During this period, he made his first recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 . After 1953, when Horowitz went into retirement, he made a number of acclaimed recordings at home, including discs of Alexander Scriabin and Muzio Clementi.

In 1962, Horowitz began recording for Columbia Records, and it is these recording which are his most famous. The most famous among them is his 1965 return concert at Carnegie Hall and his 1968 performance from his television special, Horowitz on TV, featuring Scriabin’s D# minor Etude, Op.8, No.12 and Horowitz’s own Variations on a Theme from Bizet’s Carmen, the most famous of his piano transcriptions along with the Stars and Stripes Forever. From 1965 until 1982, all of Horowitz’s recordings were done live.

After another brief retirement from 1982 until 1985, Horowitz returned to recording and occasional concertizing. In 1986, Horowitz made a return to the Soviet Union to give a series of concerts in Moscow and Leningrad. In the new atmospere of communication and understanding between the USSR and the USA, these concerts were seen as events of some political, as well as musical, significance. The concert was recorded and released, entitled “Horowitz in Moscow”.

Horowitz died in New York of a heart attack. He was buried in the Toscanini family tomb in Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Italy.

Horowitz is best known for his performances of the romantic repertoire, with his six recordings of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies being particularly highly acclaimed. Other well-known recordings include works by Schumann, Scriabin, Chopin and Schubert. He was sometimes accused of self indulgence in his performances, but his extravagances were always well received by his audiences. He had an unusual technique, playing with very straight fingers. He did much to champion contemporary Russian music, giving the American premieres of Sergei Prokofiev’s 6th , 7th and 8th piano sonatas.