sábado, noviembre 07, 2009

Leonardo DiCaprio * Actor * USA

Leonardo Di Caprio * Actor
Born: 11 November 1974
Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
Best known as:
Heartthrob star of the 1997 film Titanic
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Leonardo DiCaprio
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Leonardo DiCaprio has been an international superstar since the box office megahit Titanic (1997, directed by James Cameron). In front of the camera since childhood, his first big role came in 1991, on the television series Growing Pains.
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As a young movie actor he won critical raves for his role in This Boy's Life (1993, with Robert DeNiro), and an Oscar nomination for What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993, with Johnny Depp).
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His performance in 1996's Romeo and Juliet proved his bankability as a leading man and heartthrob, and after the success of Titanic (with Kate Winslet), DiCaprio became a favorite of the tabloids, with a party-boy reputation.
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He kept on working, however, and has since grown into one of Hollywood's top movie actors. Along the way he appeared in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998, with Gretchen Mol), starred in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002, with Christopher Walken) and made three movies with Martin Scorsese: Gangs of New York (2002, co-starring Cameron Diaz), The Aviator (he was nominated for an Oscar for playing eccentric innovator Howard Hughes) and The Departed (2006, starring Matt Damon).
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His performance in Blood Diamond (2006, with Djimon Hounsou) brought him another Oscar nomination. Off-screen DiCaprio is an advocate for environmental protection, an issue he became publicly involved with after he and the makers of The Beach (2000) were criticized for the environmental impact their filming had on locations in Thailand.

Carl Sagan * 1934–1996 * Astronomer

BIOGRAPHY * USA * ASTRONOMER
Carl Sagan - 1934 (Nov 09) – 1996, American astronomer and popularizer of science. Born in New York City.
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Early in his career he investigated radio emissions from Venus and concluded that the cause was a surface temperature of c.900°F (500°C) and crushing atmospheric pressure.
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He also studied color variations on Mars' surface, concluding that they were not seasonal changes as most believed but shifts in surface dust caused by windstorms. Both conclusions were substantially confirmed years later by space probes.
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Sagan is best known, however, for his research on the possibilities of extraterrestrial life (see exobiology), including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation.
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A professor of astronomy and space sciences at Cornell Univ. after 1968, he was involved with numerous NASA planetary space probes and was the creator and host of the 1980 public television science series Cosmos.
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His publications include The Dragons of Eden (1977; Pulitzer); a novel, Contact (1985); with Richard Turco, A Path Where No Man Thought (1990), on nuclear winter; with Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1992); Pale Blue Dot (1994); and The Demon-Haunted World (1995).
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Bibliography:
See biographies by K. Davidson (1999) and W. Poundstone (1999).

Madame Curie * 1867 (Nov 07) –1934 * Scientist * France

BIOGRAPHY * FRANCE
Madame Curie * 1867 (Nov 07) –1934

Curie (kürē') [key], family of French scientists. Pierre Curie,. 1859–1906, scientist, and his wife, Marie Sklodowska Curie,. 1867–1934, chemist and physicist, b. Warsaw, are known for their work on radioactivity and on radium. The Curies' daughter Irène (see under Joliot-Curie, family) was also a scientist.

Pierre Curie's early work dealt with crystallography and with the effects of temperature on magnetism; he discovered (1883) and, with his brother Jacques Curie, investigated piezoelectricity (a form of electric polarity) in crystals.
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Marie Sklodowska's interest in science was stimulated by her father, a professor of physics in Warsaw. In 1891 she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne. In 1895 she married Pierre Curie and engaged in independent research in his laboratory at the municipal school of physics and chemistry where Pierre was director of laboratories (from 1882) and professor (from 1895).

Following A. H. Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity, Mme Curie began to investigate uranium, a radioactive element found in pitchblende. In 1898 she reported a probable new element in pitchblende, and Pierre Curie joined in her research.
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They discovered (1898) both polonium and radium, laboriously isolated one gram of radium salts from about eight tons of pitchblende, and determined the atomic weights and properties of radium and polonium.
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The Curies refused to patent their processes or otherwise to profit from the commercial exploitation of radium. For their work on radioactivity they shared with Becquerel the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The Sorbonne created (1904) a special chair of physics for Pierre Curie; Marie Curie was appointed his successor after his death in a street accident.
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She also retained her professorship (assumed in 1900) at the normal school at Sèvres and continued her research. In 1910 she isolated (with André Debierne) metallic radium. As the recipient of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry she was the first person to be awarded a second Nobel Prize.
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She was made director of the laboratory of radioactivity at the Curie Institute of Radium, established jointly by the Univ. of Paris and the Pasteur Institute, for research on radioactivity and for radium therapy.

During World War I, Mme Curie devoted her energies to providing radiological services for hospitals. In 1921 a gram of radium, a gift from American women, was presented to her by President Harding; this she accepted in behalf of the Curie Institute.
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A second gram, presented in 1929, was given by Mme Curie to the newly founded Curie Institute in Warsaw. Five years later she died from the effects of radioactivity. In 1995 Marie and Pierre Curie's ashes were enshrined in the Panthéon, Paris; she was the first woman to be honored so in her own right.

Among the numerous and valuable writings of the Curies are Marie Curie's doctoral dissertation, Radioactive Substances (1902, 2 vol.; tr. 1961); Traité de radioactivité (1910); Radioactivité (1935); and her biography of Pierre Curie (1923, tr. 1923).
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Pierre Curie's collected works appeared in 1908. A biography of Marie Curie was written by a daughter, Ève Curie (tr. 1937). See also biographies by R. W. Reid (1974), F. Giroud (tr. 1986), S. Quinn (1995), and B. Goldsmith (2004).

viernes, noviembre 06, 2009

John Fitzgerald Kennedy * USA



John F. Kennedy * All about him in this homework network
http://bilingual-newspaper.blogspot.com/search?q=john+f+kennedy

John F. Kennedy * USA

IMMORTAL SPEECHES * JOHN F. KENNEDY
PRESIDENT OF THE USA 1960 * 1963
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January/ 20th / 1961 * (Final fragment)

''Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind?
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Will you join in that historic effort? In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.
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I do not shank from this responsibility - I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavour will light our country and all who serve it -- and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
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''And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.''
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''My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.''
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Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you.
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With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.''
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John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, Friday, January 20, 1961

John Fitzgerald Kennedy * USA

John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Born: 5/29/1917

Birthplace: Brookline, Mass.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on May 29, 1917. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was ambassador to Great Britain from 1937 to 1940.
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Kennedy was graduated from Harvard University in 1940 and joined the navy the next year. He became skipper of a PT boat that was sunk in the Pacific by a Japanese destroyer. Although given up for lost, he swam to a safe island, towing an injured enlisted man.
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After recovering from a war-aggravated spinal injury, Kennedy entered politics in 1946 and was elected to Congress. In 1952, he ran against Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts, and won.
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Kennedy was married on Sept. 12, 1953, to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, by whom he had three children: Caroline, John Fitzgerald, Jr. (died in a 1999 plane crash), and Patrick Bouvier (died in infancy).
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In 1957 Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for a book he had written earlier, Profiles in Courage.
After strenuous primary battles, Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination on the first ballot at the 1960 Los Angeles convention. With a plurality of only 118,574 votes, he carried the election over Vice President Richard M. Nixon and became the first Roman Catholic president.
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Kennedy brought to the White House the dynamic idea of a “New Frontier” approach in dealing with problems at home, abroad, and in the dimensions of space. Out of his leadership in his first few months in office came the 10-year Alliance for Progress to aid Latin America, the Peace Corps, and accelerated programs that brought the first Americans into orbit in the race in space.
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Failure of the U.S.-supported Cuban invasion in April 1961 led to the entrenchment of the Communist-backed Castro regime, only 90 mi from United States soil.
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When it became known that Soviet offensive missiles were being installed in Cuba in 1962, Kennedy ordered a naval “quarantine” of the island and moved troops into position to eliminate this threat to U.S. security. The world seemed on the brink of a nuclear war until Soviet premier Khrushchev ordered the removal of the missiles.
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A sudden “thaw,” or the appearance of one, in the cold war came with the agreement with the Soviet Union on a limited test-ban treaty signed in Moscow on Aug. 6, 1963.
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In his domestic policies, Kennedy's proposals for medical care for the aged and aid to education were defeated, but on minimum wage, trade legislation, and other measures he won important victories.
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Widespread racial disorders and demonstrations led to Kennedy's proposing sweeping civil rights legislation. As his third year in office drew to a close, he also recommended an $11-billion tax cut to bolster the economy. Both measures were pending in Congress when Kennedy, looking forward to a second term, journeyed to Texas for a series of speeches.
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November 22th, 1963 * Dallas, Texas, USA.
While riding in an automobile procession in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, he was shot to death by an assassin firing from an upper floor of a building. The alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed two days later in the Dallas city jail by Jack Ruby, owner of a strip-tease club.
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At 46 years of age, Kennedy became the fourth president to be assassinated and the eighth to die in office.
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See also Encyclopedia: John Fitzgerald Kennedy.Died: 11/22/1963

November 2009 * Biographies

Carl Sagan1934–1996, American astronomer
Nadia Comaneci * gymnast (Nov/12/1961)
Grace Kelly * actress, Princess of Monaco (Nov/12/1929).
Charles, Prince of Walesheir to the British throne (Nov/14/1948)
Condoleezza Ricegovernment official (Nov/14/1954)
Louis XVIIIking of France (Nov/17/1755)
Voltaire Nov/21/1694–1778, French Philosopher and Author whose name was François Marie Arouet de Voltaire.
French philosopher and author, whose original name was Arouet. One of the towering geniuses in literary and intellectual history, Voltaire personifies the Enlightenment. Voltaire's

James Cook - Cook, James Cook, James, (Nov/22)1728–79, English explorer and navigator. The son of a Yorkshire ...
Thomas Cook * travel agent (Nov/22/1808)
Cook, Thomas
Cook, Thomas, 1808–92, English travel agent. In Leicester in 1841 he founded the travel agency that bears his name. The idea of the guided tour met with quick success, and by 1852 Cook had moved his office to London. Shortly thereafter he set up (1856) his Circular Tour of Europe, and 10 years later he was arranging tours of the United States. His most spectacular achievement was the transportation of an entire expeditionary force (18,000 men) up the Nile for the attempted relief of Gen. Charles George Gordon in 1884.

November / 27th /
Anders Celsiusastronomer (1701)
Charles A. Beardhistorian (1874)
Chaim Weizmannscientist and Zionist leader (1874)
James Agee writer (1909)
Alexander Dubčekstatesman (1921)
Bruce Leemartial-arts actor (1940)
Jimi Hendrixrock musician, guitarist (1942)
Caroline Kennedy Schlossbergwriter (1957)

*
December
Maria Callas * December / 2nd

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