Boris Spassky on losing to Bobby Fischer at the World Chess Championship 1972 Witnify 2026-09-22 | Boris Spassky on losing to Bobby Fischer at the World Chess Championship 1972
Rare Footage of Jim Thorpe running Witnify 2023-07-15 | James Francis Thorpe was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics. Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won two Olympic gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics (one in classic pentathlon and the other in decathlon). He also played football (collegiate and professional), professional baseball, and basketball.He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he had been paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the contemporary amateurism rules. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals with replicas, after ruling that the decision to strip him of his medals fell outside of the required 30 days. Official IOC records still listed Thorpe as co-champion in decathlon and pentathlon until 2022, when it was decided to restore him as the sole champion in both events
Pete Seeger on his friend Woody Guthrie Witnify 2023-07-14 | Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (/ˈɡʌθri/; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He inspired several generations both politically and musically with songs such as "This Land Is Your Land".Guthrie wrote hundreds of country, folk, and children's songs, along with ballads and improvised works. Dust Bowl Ballads, Guthrie's album of songs about the Dust Bowl period, was included on Mojo magazine's list of 100 Records That Changed The World,[8] and many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress.[9] Songwriters who have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence on their work include Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Jeff Tweedy, Tom Paxton, Brian Fallon, Sean Bonnette, and Sixto Rodríguez. He frequently performed with the message "This machine kills fascists" displayed on his guitar.
Arthur Ashe on Control of his own life. Witnify 2023-07-10 | Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. (July 10, 1943 – February 6, 1993) won three Grand Slam singles titles. He started to play tennis at six years old. He was the first black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team, and the only black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. He retired in 1980.He was ranked world No. 1 by Rex Bellamy, Bud Collins, Judith Elian, Lance Tingay, World Tennis and Tennis Magazine (U.S.) in 1975. That year, Ashe was awarded the 'Martini and Rossi' Award, voted for by a panel of journalists, and the ATP Player of the Year award. In the ATP computer rankings, he peaked at No. 2 in May 1976.Ashe is believed to have acquired HIV from a blood transfusion he received during heart bypass surgery in 1983. He publicly announced his illness in April 1992, and began working to educate others about HIV and AIDS. He founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS and the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health before his death from AIDS-related pneumonia at the age of 49 on February 6, 1993. On June 20, 1993, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by United States President Bill Clinton.
Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson on the famous earring biting incident Witnify 2023-06-28 | In a boxing match for the heavyweight title, Mike Tyson was disqualified after he twice bit Evander Holyfield's ears; as a result of the infraction, he temporarily lost his boxing license. The bout occurred on June 28, 1997.
Actor Yul Brynner in a famous anti-smoking ad (1986) Witnify 2023-06-21 | The American Cancer Society announced that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer on June 21, 1954.
Katharine Graham on being Courageous as Publisher of The Washington Post Witnify 2023-06-16 | Katharine Meyer Graham (June 16, 1917 – July 17, 2001) was an American newspaper publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, from 1963 to 1991. Graham presided over the paper as it reported on the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. She was the first 20th century female publisher of a major American newspaper and the first woman elected to the board of the Associated Press.Graham's memoir, Personal History, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.
Host Bob Barker on the origins of Come on Down on The Price is Right Witnify 2023-06-15 | After more than 30 years, American game show host Bob Barker stepped down as host of The Price Is Right. #otd 2007. Hear him on the origins of "Come on Down" #BobBarker #witnify #ThePriceisRight
Judy Garland on working with the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz Witnify 2023-06-10 | Frances Ethel Gumm, also known as Judy Garland (born June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress, singer, dancer and vaudevillian. While critically acclaimed for many different roles throughout her career, she is widely known for playing the part of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). She attained international stardom as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage. Renowned for her versatility, she received an Academy Juvenile Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Special Tony Award. Garland was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, which she won for her 1961 live recording titled Judy at Carnegie Hall.Garland began performing as a child with her two older sisters, in a vaudeville group "The Gumm Sisters" and was later signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She appeared in more than two dozen films for MGM. Garland was a frequent on-screen partner of both Mickey Rooney and Gene Kelly and regularly collaborated with director and second husband Vincente Minnelli. Other starring roles during this period included Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), Easter Parade (1948) and Summer Stock (1950). In 1950, after 15 years with MGM, the studio released her amid a series of personal struggles that prevented her from fulfilling the terms of her contract.
Astrud Gilberto sings the Girl From Ipanema (the first song she ever recorded) Witnify 2023-06-07 | Astrud Gilberto was born Astrud Evangelina Weinert, the daughter of a Brazilian mother and a German father, in Salvador in the Brazilian state of Bahia. She was raised in Rio de Janeiro. Her father was a language professor, and she became fluent in several languages. She married João Gilberto in 1959 and had a son, João Marcelo Gilberto, who later joined her band. Astrud and João divorced in the mid-1960s.[4] She had another son from a second marriage, Gregory Lasorsa, who also played with his mother. João Gilberto had an affair with Brazilian singer Miúcha (Heloísa Maria Buarque de Hollanda), which caused the couple to separate. Later she had a relationship with her husband's musical collaborator, American jazz saxophone player Stan Getz while on a tortuous tour with him. During the tour Getz was abusive, and underpaid the singer at the height of her fame until her lawyer, Allan Arrow, could get her discharged from the tour contract.She immigrated to the United States in 1963 and resided in the U.S. from that time on.
Ted Turner on the launch of CNN Witnify 2023-06-01 | The Cable News Network launched at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on June 1, 1980. After an introduction by Ted Turner, the husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored the channel's first newscast.[20] Burt Reinhardt, the executive vice president of CNN, hired most of the channel's first 200 employees, including the network's first news anchor, Bernard ShawSince its debut, CNN has expanded its reach to several cable and satellite television providers, websites, and specialized closed-circuit channels (such as CNN Airport). The company has 42 bureaus (11 domestic, 31 international), more than 900 affiliated local stations (which also receive news and features content via the video newswire service CNN Newsource), and several regional and foreign-language networks around the world. The channel's success made a bona-fide mogul of founder Ted Turner and set the stage for conglomerate Time Warner's (later WarnerMedia which merged with Discovery Inc. forming Warner Bros. Discovery) eventual acquisition of the Turner Broadcasting System in 1996.
Clint Eastwood on the evolution of the Spaghetti Western Witnify 2023-05-31 | The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most of these Westerns were produced and directed by Italians.Leone's films and other core Spaghetti Westerns are often described as having eschewed, criticized, or even "demythologized" many of the conventions of traditional U.S. Westerns. This was partly intentional and partly the context of a different cultural background.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry on dating and getting to know one another Witnify 2023-05-19 | According to the couple, they first connected with each other via Instagram, though they have also said that they were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend in July 2016. On November 8, eight days after the relationship was made public by the press, the prince directed his communications secretary to release a statement on his behalf to express personal concern about pejorative and false comments made about his girlfriend by mainstream media and internet trolls.Later, in a letter to a British media regulator, Markle's representatives complained about harassment from journalists. In September 2017, Markle and Prince Harry appeared together in public in Toronto at the Invictus Games, of which Harry is founding patron.Meghan Markle's engagement to Prince Harry was announced on November 27, 2017, by Harry's father Charles (then the Prince of Wales). The announcement was greeted with enthusiasm by the British media, and prompted generally positive comments about a mixed-race person as a member of the royal family,[60] especially in regard to Commonwealth countries. Markle announced that she would retire from acting, and her intention to become a British citizen.[64]
Dennis Hopper on the set of Apocalypse Now Witnify 2023-05-17 | Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius and Michael Herr, is loosely based on the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the Vietnam War. The film follows a river journey from South Vietnam into Cambodia undertaken by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), who is on a secret mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a renegade Special Forces officer who is accused of murder and presumed insane. The ensemble cast also features Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne and Dennis Hopper.Milius became interested in adapting Heart of Darkness for a Vietnam War setting in the late 1960s, and initially began developing the film with Coppola as producer and George Lucas as director. After Lucas became unavailable, Coppola took over directorial control, and was influenced by Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) in his approach to the material. Initially set to be a five-month shoot in the Philippines starting in March 1976, a series of problems lengthened it to over a year. These problems included expensive sets being destroyed by severe weather, Brando showing up on set overweight and completely unprepared, and Sheen having a breakdown and suffering a near-fatal heart attack on location. After photography was finally finished in May 1977, the release was postponed several times while Coppola edited over a million feet of film. Much of these difficulties are chronicled in the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991).
Olga Korbut on winning Gold at the 1972 Olympics Witnify 2023-05-17 | Olga Valentinovna Korbut[nb 1] (born 16 May 1955) is a former gymnast who competed for the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the "Sparrow from Minsk", she won four gold medals and two silver medals at the Summer Olympic Games, in which she competed in 1972 and 1976 for the Soviet team,[1] and was the inaugural inductee to the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1988.Korbut retired from gymnastics in 1977 at the age of 22, considered young for gymnasts of the period,[2] but her influence and legacy in gymnastics was far reaching.[3] Korbut's 1972 Olympic performances are widely credited as redefining gymnastics, changing the sport from emphasising ballet and elegance to acrobatics as well as changing gymnastics from a niche sport to one of the most popular sports in the world.[2][4] She immigrated in 1991 to, and now lives in, the United States.
Stevie Wonder on what it means to be a Soul Singer Witnify 2023-05-13 | Stevland Hardaway Morris (né Judkins; May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter. He is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include rhythm and blues, pop, soul, gospel, funk, and jazz. A virtual one-man band, Wonder's use of synthesizers and other electronic musical instruments during the 1970s reshaped the conventions of R&B. He also helped drive such genres into the album era, crafting his LPs as cohesive and consistent, in addition to socially conscious statements with complex compositions. Blind since shortly after his birth, Wonder was a child prodigy who signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11, where he was given the professional name Little Stevie Wonder.Wonder's single "Fingertips" was a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963, at the age of 13, making him the youngest artist ever to top the chart. Wonder's critical success was at its peak in the 1970s. His "classic period" began in 1972 with the releases of Music of My Mind and Talking Book, the latter featuring "Superstition", which is one of the most distinctive and famous examples of the sound of the Hohner Clavinet keyboard. His works Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) and Songs in the Key of Life (1976) all won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, making him the tied-record holder for the most Album of the Year wins, with three. He is also the only artist to have won the award with three consecutive album releases. Wonder began his "commercial period" in the 1980s; he achieved his biggest hits and highest level of fame, had increased album sales, charity participation, high-profile collaborations (including Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson), political impact, and television appearances. Wonder has continued to remain active in music and political causes.
Yogi Berra on his Yogi-isms Witnify 2023-05-12 | Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra (May 12, 1925 – September 22, 2015) was an American professional baseball catcher who later took on the roles of manager and coach. He played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) (1946–1963, 1965), all but the last for the New York Yankees. He was an 18-time All-Star and won 10 World Series championships as a player—more than any other player in MLB history.[2] Berra had a career batting average of .285, while hitting 358 home runs and 1,430 runs batted in. He is one of only six players to win the American League Most Valuable Player Award three times. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history[3] and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.
Bono on performing Sunday Bloody Sunday live for the first time in Belfast Witnify 2023-05-10 | "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the opening track from their 1983 album War and was released as the album's third single on 21 March 1983 in the Netherlands and West Germany. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is noted for its militaristic drumbeat, harsh guitar, and melodic harmonies. One of U2's most overtly political songs, its lyrics describe the horror felt by an observer of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, mainly focusing on the 1972 Bloody Sunday incident in Derry where British troops shot and killed unarmed civil rights protesters. Along with "New Year's Day", the song helped U2 reach a wider listening audience. It was generally well received by critics on the album's release.[5The song has remained a staple of U2's live concerts. During its earliest performances, the song created controversy. Lead singer Bono reasserted the song's anti-sectarian-violence message to his audience for many years. Today, it is considered one of U2's signature songs, and is one of the band's most performed tracks. Critics rate it among the best political protest songs,[8] and it has been covered by over a dozen artists. In 2004, it was ranked 268th on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time."
Eva Peron (aka Evita) Witnify 2023-05-07 | María Eva Duarte de Perón (Spanish pronunciation: [maˈɾi.a ˈeβa ˈðwaɾte ðe peˈɾon]; née María Eva Duarte; 7 May 1919 – 26 July 1952), better known as just Eva Perón or by the nickname Evita, was an Argentine politician, activist, actress, and philanthropist who served as First Lady of Argentina from June 1946 until her death in July 1952, as the wife of Argentine President Juan Domingo Perón (1895–1974). She was born in poverty in the rural village of Los Toldos, in the Pampas, as the youngest of five children. In 1934, at the age of 15, she moved to the nation's capital of Buenos Aires to pursue a career as a stage, radio, and film actress.She met Colonel Juan Perón on 22 January 1944 during a charity event at the Luna Park Stadium to benefit the victims of an earthquake in San Juan, Argentina. The two were married the following year. Juan Perón was elected President of Argentina in June 1946; during the next six years, Eva Perón became powerful within the pro-Peronist trade unions, primarily for speaking on behalf of labor rights. She also ran the Ministries of Labor and Health, founded and ran the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, championed women's suffrage in Argentina, and founded and ran the nation's first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party.
Gordon Lightfoot on writing music and being home Witnify 2023-05-02 | Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. CC OOnt (November 17, 1938 – May 1, 2023) was a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who achieved international success in folk, folk-rock, and country music. He is credited with helping to define the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and 1970s. He has been referred to as Canada's greatest songwriter and was known internationally as a folk-rock legend. Lightfoot's biographer Nicholas Jennings said, "His name is synonymous with timeless songs about trains and shipwrecks, rivers and highways, lovers and loneliness."Lightfoot's songs, including "For Lovin' Me", "Early Morning Rain", "Steel Rail Blues", "Ribbon of Darkness"—a number one hit on the U.S. country chart[6] with Marty Robbins's cover in 1965—and "Black Day in July", about the 1967 Detroit riot, brought him wide recognition in the 1960s. Canadian chart success with his own recordings began in 1962 with the No. 3 hit "(Remember Me) I'm the One", followed by recognition and charting abroad in the 1970s. He topped the US Hot 100 or AC chart with the hits "If You Could Read My Mind" (1970), "Sundown" (1974); "Carefree Highway" (1974), "Rainy Day People" (1975), and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (1976), and had many other hits that appeared in the top 40.[7]Several of Lightfoot's albums achieved gold and multi-platinum status internationally. His songs have been recorded by artists such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Jr., Jerry Lee Lewis, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Harry Belafonte, The Grateful Dead, Olivia Newton-John,[8] and Jim Croce.[9][10] The Guess Who recorded a song called "Lightfoot" on their 1968 album Wheatfield Soul; the lyrics contain many Lightfoot song titles.
Internet Founder Tim Berners-Lee on the power of the internet Witnify 2023-04-30 | Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee , is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a professorial research fellow at the University of Oxford[ and a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989, then implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-NovemberBerners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the Web. He co-founded (with his then-wife-to-be Rosemary Leith) the World Wide Web Foundation. He is a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com founder's chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. In 2011, he was named as a member of the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation.[16] He is a founder and president of the Open Data Institute and is currently an advisor at social network MeWe.He devised and implemented the first Web browser and Web server, and helped foster the Web's subsequent explosive development. He currently directs the W3 Consortium, developing tools and standards to further the Web's potential. In April 2009, he was elected as Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences.In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering work.[20][21] He was named in Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century and has received a number of other accolades for his invention.[22] He was honoured as the "Inventor of the World Wide Web" during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in which he appeared working with a vintage NeXT Computer.[23] He tweeted "This is for everyone"[24] which appeared in LED lights attached to the chairs of the audience.[23] He received the 2016 Turing Award "for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale".
Willie Nelson performing in 1962 pre pony-tail. Witnify 2023-04-28 | Willie Hugh Nelson (born April 29, 1933) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, political activist and actor. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed in the late 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. The critical success of his album Shotgun Willie (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger (1975) and Stardust (1978), made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana.Born during the Great Depression and raised by his grandparents, Nelson wrote his first song at age seven and joined his first band at ten. During high school, he toured locally with the Bohemian Polka as their lead singer and guitar player. After graduating from high school in 1950, he joined the U.S. Air Force but was later discharged due to back problems. After his return, Nelson attended Baylor University for two years but dropped out because he was succeeding in music. He worked as a disc jockey at radio stations in his native Texas, and in several radio stations in the Pacific Northwest, all the while working as a singer and songwriter throughout the late 1950s. During that time, he wrote songs that would become country standards, including "Funny How Time Slips Away", "Hello Walls", "Pretty Paper", and "Crazy". In 1960 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and later signed a publishing contract with Pamper Music which allowed him to join Ray Price's band as a bassist. In 1962, he recorded his first album, ...And Then I Wrote. Due to this success, Nelson signed in 1964 with RCA Victor and joined the Grand Ole Opry the following year. After mid-chart hits in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, Nelson grew weary of the corporate Nashville music scene, and in 1972 he moved to Austin, Texas. The ongoing music scene of Austin motivated Nelson to return to performing, appearing frequently at the Armadillo World Headquarters.In 1973, after signing with Atlantic Records, Nelson turned to outlaw country, including albums such as Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages. In 1975, he switched to Columbia Records, where he recorded the critically acclaimed album Red Headed Stranger. The same year, he recorded another outlaw country album, Wanted! The Outlaws, along with Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser. During the mid-1980s, while creating hit albums like Honeysuckle Rose and recording hit songs like "On the Road Again", "To All the Girls I've Loved Before", and "Pancho and Lefty", he joined the country supergroup The Highwaymen, along with fellow singers Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson. In 1985, he helped organize the first Farm Aid concert to benefit American farmers; the concerts have been held annually ever since and Nelson has been a fixture, appearing at every one.In 1990, Nelson's assets were seized by the Internal Revenue Service, which claimed that he owed $32 million. The difficulty of paying his outstanding debt was aggravated by weak investments he had made during the 1980s. In 1992, Nelson released The IRS Tapes: Who'll Buy My Memories?; the profits of the double album—destined to the IRS—and the auction of Nelson's assets cleared his debt. During the 1990s and 2000s, Nelson continued touring extensively, and released albums every year. Reviews ranged from positive to mixed. He explored genres such as reggae, blues, jazz, and folk.Nelson made his first movie appearance in the 1979 film The Electric Horseman, followed by other appearances in movies and on television. Nelson is a major liberal activist and the co-chair of the advisory board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which is in favor of marijuana legalization. On the environmental front, Nelson owns the biodiesel brand Willie Nelson Biodiesel, whose product is made from vegetable oil. Nelson is also the honorary chairman of the advisory board of the Texas Music Project, the official music charity of the state of Texas.
Emmet Tills cousin on finally hearing the truth Witnify 2023-04-27 | Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement.[2]Till was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. During summer vacation in August 1955, he was visiting relatives near Money, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. He spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the white, married proprietor of a small grocery store there. Although what happened at the store is a matter of dispute, Till was accused of flirting with, touching, or whistling at Bryant. Till's interaction with Bryant, perhaps unwittingly, violated the unwritten code of behavior for a black male interacting with a white female in the Jim Crow-era South.[3] Several nights after the incident in the store, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam, who were armed, went to Till's great-uncle's house and abducted Emmett. They took him away then beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, the boy's mutilated and bloated body was discovered and retrieved from the river.
Harry Belafonte on Fame and Activism Witnify 2023-04-26 | Harry Belafonte (born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927 – April 25, 2023) was a Jamaican-American singer, actor and activist, who popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.Belafonte was best known for his recordings of "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)", "Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)", "Jamaica Farewell", and "Mary's Boy Child". He recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He also starred in films such as Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959).Belafonte considered the actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson a mentor, and he was a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He was a vocal critic of the policies of the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations. Belafonte acted as the American Civil Liberties Union celebrity ambassador for juvenile justice issues.Belafonte won three Grammy Awards (including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award), an Emmy Award,and a Tony Award. In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994. In 2014, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy's 6th Annual Governors Awards and in 2022 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category.
Leonard Lauder on learning from his mother Estee Lauder Witnify 2023-04-24 | Estee Lauder was born in Corona, Queens] New York City the second child born to Rose Schotz and Max Mentzer.[8][9] Her parents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants on the mother's side her grandmother was from Sátoraljaújhely and her grandfather from Gelle (now Holice, Slovakia),while her father had Czech-Jewish ancestry. Lauder's claims of descent from European aristocracy were discredited in a biography, Estée Lauder: Beyond the Magic (1985) by Lee Israel; her New York Times obituary observed 'she was a New Yorker and not an aristocrat at all', notwithstanding 'the mythmaking that is so much of the magic of the beauty industry'] Her 'favourite story was that she had been brought up by her Viennese mother in fashionable Flushing, Long Island, in a sumptuous home with stables, a chauffeured car and an Italian nurse.'In actuality, her mother Rose emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1898 with her five children to join her husband, Abraham Rosenthal.[8] But, in 1905, she married Max Mentzer, a shopkeeper who had also immigrated to the United States in the 1890s. When their daughter was born, they wanted to name her Eszti, after her mother's favorite Hungarian aunt, but decided at the last minute to keep the name "Josephine", which they had agreed upon. However, the baby's nickname became "Estee", the name she would grow up using and responding to. Eventually, when she launched her perfume empire with her husband, she added an accent mark to make her name look French and began pronouncing it the way her father had in his Hungarian accent.
John Madden on coaching the Oakland Raiders Witnify 2023-04-10 | John Earl Madden (April 10, 1936 – December 28, 2021) was an American football coach and sports commentator in the National Football League (NFL). He served as the head coach of the Oakland Raiders from 1969 to 1978, who he led to eight playoff appearances, seven division titles, seven AFL/AFC Championship Game appearances, and the franchise's first Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XI. Never having a losing season, Madden holds the highest winning percentage among NFL head coaches who coached at least 100 games.After retiring from coaching, Madden was a color commentator for NFL telecasts from 1979 to 2008, which earned him 16 Sports Emmy Awards. Madden appeared on all four major American television networks, providing commentary for games broadcast by CBS, Fox, ABC, and NBC. He also lent his name, expertise, and commentary to the Madden NFL video game series (1988–present), which became the best-selling football video game franchise of all time. Madden was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006.
Omar Sharif on working with Peter OToole in Lawrence of Arabia Witnify 2023-04-10 | Omar Sharif was an Egyptian actor, generally regarded as one of his country's greatest male film stars. He began his career in his native country in the 1950s, but is best known for his appearances in American, British, French, and Italian productions. His career encompassed over 100 films spanning 50 years, and brought him many accolades including three Golden Globe Awards and a César Award for Best Actor.Sharif played opposite Peter O'Toole as Sherif Ali in the David Lean epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and portrayed the title role in Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965), earning him the Golden Globe for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. He continued to play romantic leads, in films like Funny Girl (1968) and The Tamarind Seed (1974), and historical figures like the eponymous characters in Genghis Khan (1965) and Che! (1969). His acting career continued well into old age, with a well-received turn as a Muslim Turkish immigrant in the French film Monsieur Ibrahim (2003). He made his final film appearance in 2015, the year of his death.
Commander Robert Peary on discovering the North Pole Witnify 2023-04-06 | On April 6, 1909, American explorer Robert Peary accomplishes a long elusive dream, when he, assistant Matthew Henson and four Inuits reach what they determine to be the North Pole. Decades after Peary’s death, however, navigational errors in his travel log surfaced, placing the expedition in all probability a few miles short of its goal.Peary, a U.S. Navy civil engineer, made his first trip to the interior of Greenland in 1886. In 1891, Henson, a young African American sailor, joined him on his second arctic expedition. Their team made an extended dogsled journey to the northeast of Greenland and explored what became known as “Peary Land.” In 1893, the explorers began working toward the North Pole, and in 1906, during their second attempt, they nearly reached latitude 88 degrees north–only 150 miles from their objective.In 1908, the pair traveled to Ellesmere Island by ship and in 1909 raced across hundreds of miles of ice to reach what they calculated as latitude 90 degrees north on April 6, 1909. Although their achievement was widely acclaimed, Dr. Frederick A. Cook challenged their distinction of being the first to reach the North Pole. A former associate of Peary, Cook claimed he had already reached the pole by dogsled the previous year. A major controversy followed, and in 1911 the U.S. Congress formally recognized Peary’s claim.In recent years, further studies of the conflicting claims suggest that neither expedition reached the exact North Pole, but that Peary and Henson came far closer, falling perhaps 30 miles short. On May 3, 1952, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma stepped out of a plane and walked to the precise location of the North Pole.
Diane Keaton on Annie Hall Witnify 2023-04-03 | The rise of the action-adventure blockbuster was on the horizon, but on April 3, 1978, the small-scale romantic comedy triumphs over the big-budget space extravaganza. At the 50th annual Academy Awards, held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall won the Oscar for Best Picture, beating out George Lucas’ Star Wars.Annie Hall was seen as a major turning point for Allen, who made his debut as a triple threat (writer-director-star) with Take the Money and Run (1969) and proved his knack for zany comedy in films like Bananas (1971) and Sleeper (1973). In Annie Hall, Allen blended comedy with the offbeat musings on love and relationships that had previously been the stuff of his stand-up comedy and written essays.As the film began, Allen’s Alvy Singer, a New York City comedy writer, ponders the demise of his relationship with the freewheeling singer Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). The film leapt around between New York City and Hollywood along with Alvy’s memories, which include scenes from his childhood, his first meeting with Annie, an ill-fated visit to her family and meetings between the couple when they are both involved with other people. Allen employed unusual cinematic techniques, including split-screen imagery, characters addressing the camera directly, subtitles to explain what the characters are really thinking during a conversation and an animated sequence in which Alvy interacts with the Wicked Queen from Snow White. While the movie originally contained a subplot about a murder, it was completely cut out in the editing, reducing the running time from 140 minutes to a more manageable 95 minutes.
John Gotti in prison Witnify 2023-04-02 | A jury in New York finds mobster John Gotti, nicknamed the Teflon Don for his ability to elude conviction, guilty on 13 counts, including murder and racketeering. In the wake of the conviction, the assistant director of the FBI’s New York office, James Fox, was quoted as saying, “The don is covered in Velcro, and every charge stuck.” On June 23 of that year, Gotti was sentenced to life in prison, dealing a significant blow to organized crime.John Joseph Gotti, Jr., was born in the Bronx, New York, on October 27, 1940. He rose through the ranks of the Gambino crime family and seized power after ordering the December 1985 murder of then-boss Paul Castellano outside a Manhattan steakhouse. Behind closed doors, Gotti was a ruthless, controlling figure. Publicly, he became a tabloid celebrity, famous for his swagger and expensive suits, which earned him another nickname, the Dapper Don.During the 1980s, Gotti’s lawyer Bruce Cutler won him acquittals three times. A jury member in one of those trials was later convicted of accepting a bribe to acquit the mob boss. In December 1990, Gotti was arrested at the Ravenite Social Club, his headquarters in New York City’s Little Italy neighborhood. The ensuing trial, which started in January 1992, created a media frenzy. Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, one of Gotti’s top soldiers, made a deal with the government and testified in court against his boss. Gravano admitted to committing 19 murders, 10 of them sanctioned by Gotti. In addition, prosecutors presented secret taped conversations that incriminated Gotti. After deliberating for 13 hours, the jury, which had been kept anonymous and sequestered during the trial, came back with a verdict on April 2, 1992, finding Gotti guilty on all counts. The mob boss was sent to the U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, where he was held in virtual solitary confinement. On June 10, 2002, Gotti died of throat cancer at age 61 at a Springfield, Missouri, medical center for federal prisoners.
Steve Wozniak on the early days of Apple and meeting Steve Jobs for the first time Witnify 2023-04-01 | Apple was founded as Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976, by Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne to develop and sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. It was incorporated by Jobs and Wozniak as Apple Computer, Inc. in 1977. The company's second computer, the Apple II, became a best seller and one of the first mass-produced microcomputers. Apple went public in 1980 to instant financial success. The company developed computers featuring innovative graphical user interfaces, including the 1984 original Macintosh, announced that year in a critically acclaimed advertisement. By 1985, the high cost of its products, and power struggles between executives, caused problems. Wozniak stepped back from Apple amicably and pursued other ventures, while Jobs resigned bitterly and founded NeXT, taking some Apple employees with him.
Keanu Reeves on the appeal of The Matrix Witnify 2023-03-31 | On March 31, 1999, the writing and directing sibling team of Lana and Lilly Wachowski release their second film, the mind-blowing science-fiction blockbuster The Matrix.Born and raised in Chicago, the Wachowskis both dropped out of college and started a house-painting and construction business before they got into the film industry. They collaborated on two screenplays, the second of which was made into the action movie Assassins (1995), starring Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas. A year later, the Wachowskis wrote, directed and executive-produced their debut film, Bound. Critics praised the relatively low-budget crime thriller, about lesbian lovers who steal from the mob, and it became a cult hit.The Wachowski's next project, however, brought them to a whole new level. Filmed for $70 million, The Matrix was a stylish, innovative and visually spectacular take on a familiar premise–that humans are unknowing inhabitants of a world controlled by machines–central to films such as Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Matrix starred Keanu Reeves as a computer hacker who learns that human-like computers have created a fake world, the Matrix, to enslave the remaining humans while keeping them in the dark about their dire fate. Guided by the sleek, mysterious Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss), the hacker is dubbed Neo and told he alone can play the crucial role in deciding the fate of the world. Packed with slow-motion camera tricks and references from a myriad of sources–including comic books, the Bible, Lewis Carroll, Eastern philosophy and film noir—The Matrix also stunned viewers with its Hong Kong-style fight scenes, choreographed by the martial-arts master Yuen Wo Ping and performed with the help of invisible wires allowing the characters to fly through the air. Greeted with enthusiasm by computer-gaming fanatics and mainstream audiences alike, The Matrix earned a staggering $470 million worldwide and won four Academy Awards, for Best Editing, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.The Wachowskis had always envisioned The Matrix as a trilogy, and they shot back-to-back sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, in Australia. Released six months apart in 2003, they were generally agreed to be less successful than the original film. All in all, however, the franchise–including a best-selling video game, Enter the Matrix–earned the production company, Warner Brothers, more than $1 billion. The Wachowskis, meanwhile, became famously reclusive, refusing to promote the Matrix sequels or give interviews. As a follow-up to their phenomenal success, the Wachowskis wrote and produced for Animatrix, a series of short films based on The Matrix, and wrote and produced the provocative action thriller V for Vendetta (2006). In 2008, the Wachowskis returned to directing (as well as writing and producing) with Speed Racer, a film adaptation of the Japanese anime series by the same name. Later films include Cloud Atlas (2012) and Jupiter Ascending (2015). A sequel to The Matrix Revolutions, The Matrix Resurrections, was released in 2021.
Mary Pickford upon receiving an Honorary Oscar in 1976 Witnify 2023-03-29 | Gene Kelly and Producer Walter Mirisch presented an Honorary Oscar® to Mary Pickford in recognition of her unique contributions to the film industry and the development of film as an artistic medium at the 48th Academy Awards® in 1976.Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founded Pickford–Fairbanks Studios and United Artists, and was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Pickford is considered to be one of the most recognisable women in history.[Cited as "America's Sweetheart" during the silent film era, she is named on the list of the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars as the 24th top female stars from the Classical Hollywood Cinema era [5][6][7] and the "girl with the curls",Pickford was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. She was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her own name,[8] and was one of the most popular actresses of the 1910s and 1920s, earning the nickname "Queen of the Movies". She is credited with having defined the ingénue type in cinema.She was awarded the second Academy Award for Best Actress for her first sound film role in Coquette (1929). By the late 1920s Pickford's career went into decline. She received an Academy Honorary Award in 1976 in consideration of her contributions to American cinema.
Mies van der Rohe on his architectural philosophy Witnify 2023-03-27 | Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (/miːs ... roʊ/ MEESS-...-ROH; German: [ˈluːtvɪç ˈmiːs fan deːɐ̯ ˈʁoːə]; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect and furniture designer.[1] He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of modernist architecture.In the 1930s, Mies was the last director of the Bauhaus, a ground-breaking school of modernist art, design and architecture.[2] After Nazism's rise to power, with its strong opposition to modernism (leading to the closing of the Bauhaus itself), Mies emigrated to the United States. He accepted the position to head the architecture school at what is today the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.Mies sought to establish his own particular architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own eras. The style he created made a statement with its extreme clarity and simplicity. His mature buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces. He strove toward an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of unobstructed free-flowing open space. He called his buildings "skin and bones" architecture. He sought an objective approach that would guide the creative process of architectural design, but was always concerned with expressing the spirit of the modern era. He is often associated with his fondness for the aphorisms "less is more" and "God is in the details".
Leonardo DiCaprio on Titanic Witnify 2023-03-23 | By the time James Cameron took the stage to accept his Academy Award for Best Director on the night of March 23, 1998, the Oscar dominance of his blockbuster film Titanic was all but assured. Titanic tied the record for most Oscar nominations with 14—joining 1950’s All About Eve—and by night’s end would tie with Ben Hur (1959) for most wins by sweeping 11 categories, including the coveted Best Picture.With Aliens, The Abyss and the first two Terminator movies under his belt, Cameron had already proved himself a master of the action-packed science-fiction blockbuster genre. His ambition reached new heights with Titanic, a retelling of the ill-fated 1912 voyage of the unparalleled passenger steamship, which sank in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. Cameron’s films were notorious for going long over schedule and way over budget, and Titanic was worse than most. Originally budgeted at $100 million, the film eventually topped out at about $200 million, more than any other film in history; it also missed its original release date, making the studio executives sweat as they envisioned another Heaven’s Gate (the infamous big-budget flop that sank United Artists in the early 1980s).Personally, Cameron was known for his dictatorial style, hot temper and obsession with detail. For his reenactment of the historic ship’s sinking, the film’s crew constructed a 775-foot (90 percent scale) replica of the RMS Titanic and put it in a tank containing 17 million gallons of water. Production was done in Mexico, and members of the cast and crew later complained about the harsh conditions, including shooting days of more than 20 hours, much of that time spent standing in cold, murky Pacific Ocean water.Released just before Christmas in 1997, Titanic became a monster hit and continued to earn steadily at the box office over the next six months until it became the first movie ever to gross more than $1 billion internationally. Critical response to the film was divided. Many reviews were positive, but some critics praised the visual effects and action sequences—especially the last hour of the three-hour-plus movie, which depicts the epic sinking of the luxury liner—even while pointing out the weakness of the screenplay, which Cameron penned himself. In one particularly memorable pan, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film “reeks of phoniness and lacks even minimal originality.” Cameron famously fired back in a letter to the editor, demanding (unsuccessfully) that the Times “impeach Kenneth Turan.”On Oscar night, Cameron echoed Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Titanic by shouting “I’m the king of the world!” upon accepting his Best Director statuette. While accepting Best Picture (as the film’s producer), the filmmaker was slightly more subdued, asking for a moment of silence in remembrance of the more than 1,500 people who drowned on the Titanic.
Larry Hagman on The Who Shot JR episode of Dallas. Witnify 2023-03-22 | On March 21, 1980, J.R. Ewing, the character millions love to hate on television’s popular prime-time drama Dallas, is shot by an unknown assailant. The shooting made the season-ending episode one of TV’s most famous cliffhangers, inspired widespread media coverage and left America wondering “Who shot J.R.?” for the next eight months. On November 21, 1980, the premiere episode of Dallas’s third season solved the mystery, identifying Kristin Shepard, J.R.’s mistress (and his wife’s sister), as the culprit.The CBS television network debuted the first five-episode pilot season of Dallas in 1978; it went on to run for another 12 full-length seasons. The first show of its kind, Dallas was dubbed a “prime-time soap opera” for its serial plots and dramatic tales of moral excess. The show revolved around the relations of two Texas oil families: the wealthy, successful Ewings and the perpetually down-on-their-luck Barnes clan. The families’ patriarchs, Jock Ewing and Digger Barnes, were former partners locked in a years-long feud over oil fields Barnes claimed had been stolen by Ewing. To make matters more interesting, Ewing’s youngest son Bobby (Patrick Duffy) and Barnes’ daughter Pam (Victoria Principal) had married, linking the battling clans even more closely. The character of J.R. Ewing, Bobby’s oldest brother and a greedy, conniving, womanizing scoundrel, was played by Larry Hagman.In the wake of the season-ending cliffhanger episode, “A House Divided,” audiences were hard-pressed to guess who was responsible for the shooting; J.R. had a host of enemies. That summer, the question “Who Shot J.R.?” entered the national lexicon, becoming a popular T-shirt slogan, and heightening anticipation of the soap’s third season, which was to come in the fall. Much to the dismay of Dallas fans, the premiere was delayed because of a Screen Actors Guild strike. When it finally aired, the episode revealing the shooter became one of television’s most-watched shows, with an audience of 83 million people, and helped put Dallas into greater worldwide circulation. It also popularized the use of the cliffhanger by TV writers.The shooting of J.R. was not Dallas’s only notorious plot twist. In September 1986, fans learned that the entire previous season, in which main character Bobby Ewing had died, was merely a dream of Pam’s. The show’s writers had killed the Bobby character off because Duffy had decided to leave the show. When he agreed to return, they featured him stepping out of the shower on the season-ending cliffhanger, and then were forced the next season to explain his sudden reappearance.The last new episode of Dallas aired on May 3, 1991.
John Lennon on meeting Yoko Ono for the first time Witnify 2023-03-21 | Lennon first met Yoko Ono on 9 November 1966 at the Indica Gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit. They were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar. Lennon was intrigued by Ono's "Hammer A Nail": patrons hammered a nail into a wooden board, creating the art piece. Although the exhibition had not yet begun, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a millionaire! He might buy it." According to Lennon's recollection in 1980, Ono had not heard of the Beatles, but she relented on condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon said he replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in." Ono subsequently related that Lennon had taken a bite out of the apple on display in her work Apple, much to her furyOno began to telephone and visit Lennon at his home. When Cynthia asked him for an explanation, Lennon explained that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her "avant-garde bullshit". While his wife was on holiday in Greece in May 1968, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording what would become the Two Virgins album, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn".] When Lennon's wife returned home she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi." Ono became pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child on 21 November 1968, a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted.Two years before the Beatles disbanded, Lennon and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969,and spent their honeymoon at the Hilton Amsterdam, campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for Peace. They planned another Bed-In in the United States, but were denied entry,[224] so held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance". They often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their "Bagism", first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Lennon detailed this period in the Beatles song "The Ballad of John and Yoko". Lennon changed his name by deed poll on 22 April 1969, adding "Ono" as a middle name. The brief ceremony took place on the roof of the Apple Corps building, where the Beatles had performed their rooftop concert three months earlier. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter, some official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon. The couple settled at Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill in Berkshire. After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-size bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on the Beatles' album, Abbey Road.Ono and Lennon moved to New York, to a flat on Bank Street, Greenwich Village. Looking for somewhere with better security, they relocated in 1973 to the more secure Dakota overlooking Central Park at 1 West 72nd Street.
Arthur C. Clarke predicts the future of computing and the internet...in 1974! Witnify 2023-03-19 | In this ABC interview from 1974, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke makes the bold claim that one day computers will allow people to work from home and access their banking records.Sir Arthur Charles Clarke CBE FRAS (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist,[3] inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely regarded as one of the most influential films of all time. Clarke was a science fiction writer, an avid populariser of space travel, and a futurist of a distinguished ability. He wrote many books and many essays for popular magazines. In 1961, he received the Kalinga Prize, a UNESCO award for popularising science. Clarke's science and science-fiction writings earned him the moniker "Prophet of the Space Age".[6] His science-fiction writings in particular earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, which along with a large readership, made him one of the towering figures of the genre. For many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.Clarke was a lifelong proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the BIS, British Interplanetary Society. In 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system using geostationary orbits.[8] He was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946 to 1947 and again in 1951–1953.Clarke immigrated to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1956, to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year, he discovered the underwater ruins of the ancient original Koneswaram Temple in Trincomalee. Clarke augmented his popularity in the 1980s, as the host of television shows such as Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death.[11]Clarke was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1989 "for services to British cultural interests in Sri Lanka".[12] He was knighted in 1998[13][14] and was awarded Sri Lanka's highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005.[15]
Irving Berlin on one of his early compositions Witnify 2023-03-18 | In one of his RARE few television appearances, Irving Berlin explains the workings of his "special" piano to Dinah Shore and Tony Martin, and plays an early composition.A century ago, even before the phonograph had become a common household item, there was already a burgeoning music industry in the United States based not on the sale of recorded musical performances, but on the sale of sheet music. It was in the medium of printed paper, and not grooved lacquer or vinyl discs, that songs gained popularity in the first two decades of the 20th century, and no song gained greater popularity in that era than Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Copyrighted on March 18, 1911, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” was the multimillion-selling smash hit that helped turn American popular music into a major international phenomenon, both culturally and economically.It may seem like a rather grand claim to make about a simple, catchy tune, but then as now, simple and catchy were great virtues in the realm of pop music. Most people first encountered “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” when it was played on the piano by a friend or family member. This was the way that songs caught on in the era before radio, and part of what helped “Alexander” catch on was its relative lack of complexity. Though nominally a ragtime tune, anyone who plays the piano would quickly recognize the differences between it and a true rag like Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer,” which places some fairly significant demands on both the left and right hand. “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” is a vastly simpler piece for an amateur to master, and this greatly encouraged sheet music sales, which topped 1.5 million copies in the first 18 months after its publication.Though it gained worldwide popularity purely as a piece of printed sheet music, innumerable recorded versions of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” would soon follow, particularly after lyrics were added to what was originally an instrumental tune. Those lyrics—”Come on and hear, Come on and hear…”—and that tune are still familiar a century after they were written. Some of Irving Berlin’s later contributions to the American popular music canon—songs like “White Christmas,” “God Bless America” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business”—eclipsed even the massive success of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” It’s entirely possible, however, that those 20th-century classics would never have been written were it not for the commercial success that Irving Berlin achieved with the song he copyrighted on this day in 1911.
Ace Greenberg noon the fall of Bear Stearns Witnify 2023-03-16 | Former Bear Stearns Chairman Ace Greenberg on the fall of Bears Sterns. On March 16, 2008, Bear Stearns, the 85-year-old investment bank, narrowly avoids bankruptcy by its sale to J.P. Morgan Chase and Co. at the shockingly low price of $2 per share.With a stock market capitalization of $20 billion in early 2007, Bear Stearns seemed to be riding high. But its increasing involvement in the hedge-fund business, particularly with risky mortgage-backed securities, paved the way for it to become one of the earliest casualties of the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the Great Recession.In the early to mid-2000s, as home prices in the United States rose, lenders began giving mortgages to borrowers whose poor credit would otherwise have prohibited them from obtaining a mortgage.With the housing market booming, Bear Stearns and other investment banks became heavily involved in selling complex securities based on these subprime mortgages, with little regard for how risky they would turn out to be.After peaking in mid-2006, housing prices began to decline rapidly, and many of these subprime borrowers began defaulting on their mortgages. Mortgage originators started feeling the effects of the crisis first: New Century Financial, which specialized in subprime mortgages, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2007.In June, Bear Stearns was forced to pay some $3.2 billion to bail out the High-Grade Structured-Credit Strategies Fund, which specialized in risky investments like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and mortgage-backed securities (MBSs).The following month, the firm revealed that the High-Grade fund and another related hedge fund had lost nearly all of their value due to the steep decline in the subprime mortgage market.For the fourth quarter of 2007, Bear recorded a loss for the first time in some 80 years, and CEO James Cayne was forced to step down; Alan Schwartz replaced him in January 2008.Barely two months later, the collapse of Bear Stearns unfolded swiftly over the course of a few days. It began on Tuesday, March 11, when the Federal Reserve announced a $50 billion lending facility to help struggling financial institutions. That same day, the rating agency Moody’s downgraded many of Bear’s mortgage-backed securities to B and C levels (or “junk bonds”).Unlike a regular bank, which can use cash from depositors to fund its operations, an investment bank like Bear Stearns often relied on short-term (even overnight) funding deals known as repurchase agreements, or “repos.”In this type of deal, Bear offered bundles of securities to another firm or an investor (such as a hedge fund) in exchange for cash, which it would then use to finance its operations for a brief period of time.
Francis Ford Coppola on how Marlon Brando became The Godfather Witnify 2023-03-15 | On March 15, 1972, The Godfather—a three-hour epic chronicling the lives of the Corleones, an Italian-American crime family led by the powerful Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando)—is released in theaters.The Godfather was adapted from the best-selling book of the same name by Mario Puzo, a novelist who grew up in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen and got his start writing pulp stories for men’s magazines. Controversy surrounded the film from the beginning: Soon after Paramount Pictures announced its production, the Italian-American Civil Rights League held a rally in Madison Square Garden, claiming the film would amount to a slur against Italian Americans. The uproar only increased publicity for the movie, which Paramount was counting to become a big-money hit after the success of Puzo’s novel.The studio’s production chief, Robert Evans, approached several directors—including Sergio Leone and Costa Gavras—about The Godfather before hiring the relatively unknown Francis Ford Coppola, who was only 31 years old at the time. As an Italian American himself, Coppola strove to make the film an authentic representation of the time period and the culture, and to do justice to the complex relationships within the Corleone family, instead of focusing primarily on the violent crime aspect of the story. He worked with Puzo on the screenplay and persuaded Paramount to increase the budget of the film, which the studio had envisioned as a relatively meager $2.5 million.Perhaps most importantly, Coppola and Puzo fought to cast Marlon Brando in the coveted role of Vito Corleone. At the time, Brando’s career had been in decline for a decade, and he had become notorious for his moody on-set behavior, most notably during the filming of 1962’s Mutiny on the Bounty. When Paramount insisted that Brando do a screen test, the legendary actor complied because he wanted the role so badly. Reading his lines from hidden cue cards, Brando turned in a phenomenal, intuitive performance as the Godfather, winning an Academy Award for Best Actor (which he declined to accept). Combined with Coppola’s meticulous direction and memorable performances by the rest of the film’s cast, including Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall and Diane Keaton, Brando’s star turn propelled the film to record-breaking box-office success, as well as three Academy Awards, for Best Actor, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.The Godfather has remained a perennial choice on critics’ lists of the all-time best films in history. In 2007, it ranked second on the American Film Institute (AFI)’s list of the greatest movies of all time, behind Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941). Its sequel, The Godfather: Part II, was released in 1974 and won six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. A third installment, The Godfather: Part III (1990), received some positive reviews but was generally considered to be the weakest of the three films.
Zevon Warren reminds us all to Enjoy Every Sandwich Witnify 2023-03-13 | Warren Zevon in his final appearance on David Letterman's show after learning he had terminal lung cancer. Warren William Zevon (/ˈziːvɒn/; January 24, 1947 – September 7, 2003)[1] was an American rock singer, songwriter, and musician.Zevon's most famous compositions include "Werewolves of London", "Lawyers, Guns and Money", and "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner". All three songs are featured on his third album, Excitable Boy (1978), the title track of which is also well-known. He also wrote major hits that were recorded by other artists, including "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", "Accidentally Like a Martyr", "Mohammed's Radio", "Carmelita", and "Hasten Down the Wind".Zevon had early music industry successes as a session musician, jingle composer, songwriter, touring musician, musical coordinator, and bandleader. Despite all of that, Zevon struggled to break through in his solo career until his music was performed by Linda Ronstadt, beginning with her 1976 album Hasten Down the Wind. It launched a cult following that lasted 25 years, with Zevon making occasional returns to album and single charts until his death from mesothelioma in 2003. He briefly found a new audience by teaming up with members of R.E.M. in the blues rock outfit Hindu Love Gods for a 1990 album release, although no tour followed. In 2023, Zevon was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[2]
Elie Wiesel on learning his money with Bernie Madoff was lost Witnify 2023-03-12 | Elie Wiesel (/ˈɛli viːˈzɛl/, born Eliezer Wiesel, Yiddish: אליעזר װיזעל Eliezer Vizel;[4][5] September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.[He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes and human rights causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In his political activities, he also campaigned for victims of oppression in places like South Africa, Nicaragua, Kosovo, and Sudan. He publicly condemned the 1915 Armenian genocide and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He was described as "the most important Jew in America" by the Los Angeles Times in 2003.[7]Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind", stating that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps", as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace", Wiesel delivered a message "of peace, atonement, and human dignity" to humanity. The Nobel Committee also stressed that Wiesel's commitment originated in the sufferings of the Jewish people but that he expanded it to embrace all repressed peoples and races.[8] He was a founding board member of the New York Human Rights Foundation and remained active in it throughout his life.[9][10]
Bernie Madoff Discusses how Regulation works in 2007. Witnify 2023-03-12 | Madoff speaking at a roundtable in October 2007. He would plead guilty less than 18 months later. Bernard Lawrence Madoff (/ˈmeɪdɔːf/ MAY-dawf;] April 29, 1938 – April 14, 2021) was an American fraudster and financier who was the mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about $64.8 billion.[3][4] He was at one time chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange.[5] Madoff's firm had two basic units: a stock brokerage and an asset management business; the Ponzi scheme was centered in the asset management business.Madoff founded a penny stock brokerage in 1960, which eventually grew into Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.[6] He served as the company's chairman until his arrest on December 11, 2008.[7][8] That year, the firm was the 6th-largest market maker in S&P 500 stocks.[9] While the stock brokerage part of the business had a public profile, Madoff tried to keep his asset management business low profile and exclusive.At the firm, he employed his brother Peter Madoff as senior managing director and chief compliance officer, Peter's daughter Shana Madoff as the firm's rules and compliance officer and attorney, and his now-deceased sons Mark Madoff and Andrew Madoff. Peter was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2012,[10] and Mark hanged himself in 2010, exactly two years after his father's arrest.[11][12][13][14] Andrew died of lymphoma on September 3, 2014.[15]On December 10, 2008, Madoff's sons Mark and Andrew told authorities that their father had confessed to them that the asset management unit of his firm was a massive Ponzi scheme, and quoted him as saying that it was "one big lie".[16][17][18] The following day, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Madoff and charged him with one count of securities fraud. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had previously conducted multiple investigations into his business practices but had not uncovered the massive fraud.[9] On March 12, 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme.The Madoff investment scandal defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. Madoff said that he began the Ponzi scheme in the early 1990s, but an ex-trader admitted in court to faking records for Madoff since the early 1970s.[19][20][21] Those charged with recovering the missing money believe that the investment operation may never have been legitimate.[22][23] The amount missing from client accounts was almost $65 billion, including fabricated gains.[24] The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) trustee estimated actual losses to investors of $18 billion,[22] of which $14.418 billion has been recovered and returned, while the search for additional funds continues.[25] On June 29, 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed.[26][27][28][29] On April 14, 2021, he died at the Federal Medical Center, Butner, in North Carolina, from chronic kidney disease.[30][31][32][33]
Ron Howard on working with Andy Griffith Witnify 2023-03-12 | The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom television series that aired on CBS from October 3, 1960, to April 1, 1968, with a total of 249 half-hour episodes spanning eight seasons—159 in black and white and 90 in color.The series originated partly from an episode of The Danny Thomas Show. The show stars Andy Griffith as Andy Taylor, the widowed sheriff of Mayberry, North Carolina, a fictional community of roughly 2,000–5,000 people.[1][2] Other major characters include Andy's cousin, the well-meaning and enthusiastic deputy, Barney Fife (Don Knotts); Andy's aunt and housekeeper, Bee Taylor (Frances Bavier); and Andy's young son, Opie (Ron Howard). Eccentric townspeople and, periodically, Andy's girlfriends complete the cast. Regarding the tone of the show, Griffith said that despite a contemporary setting, the show evoked nostalgia, saying in a Today interview, "Well, though we never said it, and though it was shot in the '60s, it had a feeling of the '30s. It was, when we were doing it, of a time gone by."The series never placed lower than seventh in the Nielsen ratings, ending its final season at number one. The only other shows to end their runs at the top of the ratings are I Love Lucy (1957) and Seinfeld (1998).[4] On separate occasions, it has been ranked by TV Guide as the ninth- and thirteenth-best series in American television history.[5][6] Though neither Griffith nor the show won awards during its eight-season run, co-stars Knotts and Bavier accumulated a combined total of six Emmy Awards. The series spawned its own spin-off—Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (1964–1969) and a reunion telemovie, Return to Mayberry (1986).After the eighth season, when Griffith left the series, it was retitled Mayberry, R.F.D., with Ken Berry and Buddy Foster replacing Griffith and Howard in new roles. In the new format, it ran for 78 episodes, ending in 1971 after three seasons. Reruns of The Andy Griffith Show are often shown on TV Land, MeTV, The CW, and SundanceTV. On those channels, the episodes are edited to make room for more commercials, but some airings on SundanceTV air the full uncut versions. The complete series is available on DVD and Blu-ray and is intermittently available on such streaming video services as Amazon Prime and Paramount+. Mayberry Days, an annual festival celebrating the sitcom, is held each year in Griffith's hometown, Mount Airy, North Carolina.
George Burns on Gracie Allen Witnify 2023-03-10 | On March 9, 1996, the legendary cigar-chomping performer George Burns dies at his home in Beverly Hills, California, just weeks after celebrating his 100th birthday.Born Nathan Birnbaum in New York City, Burns was one of 12 children. As a young child, he sang for pennies on street corners and in saloons, and at age 13, he started a dance academy with a friend. In 1922, Burns was performing the latest in a string of song-and-dance acts in Newark, New Jersey, when he teamed up with a fellow performer, Gracie Allen. Though Allen began as the straight one in their partnership, her natural comedic ability prompted Burns to rewrite their material to give her most of the punch lines. From then on, Burns played the straight man to Allen’s ditz, with hilarious results.By the time Burns and Allen married in 1926 (his brief first marriage, to the dancer Hannah Siegel, ended in divorce), they had already become known on the vaudeville circuit. The 1920s were a golden era for vaudeville performers, and Burns and Allen were only two of a number of greats—their peers included Milton Berle, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Bert Lahr and Jack Benny (Burns’ close friend)—who successfully made the transition to other forms of entertainment. After making their radio debut in 1929, the pair landed a regular show, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, which aired from 1932 to 1950 on the NBC network. In the late 1930s, the program’s audience numbered more than 40 million people and NBC paid Burns and Allen $10,000 per week, an enormous sum for the time. The couple also played themselves on the big screen in a number of films, including International House (1933), Many Happy Returns (1934), A Damsel in Distress (1937) and College Swing (1938).In 1950, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show made a seamless transition to television, airing on CBS and becoming one of the top-ranked programs for the duration of the decade. The Burns-Allen team remained in the public eye until Allen’s retirement in 1959. She died of a heart attack in 1964, at the age of 58. Though Allen was a Roman Catholic, Burns buried her with Episcopal rites, explaining that as a Jewish man he couldn’t be buried in Catholic-consecrated ground, and he wanted to be buried beside her.After Burns underwent major heart surgery in 1975 at the age of 79, his career got a second wind. That year, he played a retired vaudevillian in the film adaptation of Neil Simon’s play The Sunshine Boys, co-starring Walter Matthau and Richard Benjamin. Burns won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role. After that, there was no shortage of movie parts for the octogenarian actor, who played God in Oh God! (1977) and its sequels, Oh God! Book II (1980) and Oh God! You Devil (1984), in which Burns was featured as both God and the Devil. He also starred in Just You and Me, Kid (1979), Going in Style (1979) and Eighteen Again (1988).In 1988, Burns won an award for lifetime achievement from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He wrote two best-selling autobiographical works, including Gracie: A Love Story (1988) and All My Best Friends (1989), along with eight other books that earned him his well-deserved reputation as an invaluable first-hand observer of the history of 20th century entertainment.
Muhammad Alis doctor on his loss to Joe Frazier in 1971. Witnify 2023-03-08 | On March 8, 1971, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier meet for the “Fight of the Century” at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The bout marked Ali’s return to the marquee three-and-a-half years after boxing commissions revoked his license over his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War. It was also Ali’s first chance to win back the heavyweight championship, which had been stripped by the WBA (World Boxing Association). Ali's doctor, Ferdie Pacheco on the effect on his patient. Both Ali and Frazier were undefeated and had won Olympic gold medals and multiple Golden Gloves championships, but their personalities were vastly different. Ali was a showboat, and his mastery of the media, his improvisational poetry during interviews and his debonair good looks separated him from every other fighter, and every other athlete, of his generation. Much to his opponent’s dismay, Ali successfully painted the less popular and more reserved Frazier as an “Uncle Tom” and an instrument of the establishment. Leading up to the fight, the national press fawned over Ali, heralding “the hero’s return.” Ali played right along, while doing his best to knock Frazier off his game through mental intimidation. He even went so far as to repeatedly call Frazier a “gorilla.”On the night of the fight, celebrities filled Madison Square Garden. Miles Davis was resplendent in a red suit. Frank Sinatra sat ringside, photographing the fight for a Life magazine article. It was said that billions of people were following the fight in person, on TV or on the radio, and most of them were cheering for Ali.The fight lived up to the hype. Ali initially landed more punches, gliding about the ring as light on his feet as he was in the prime of his career. Frazier’s punches, however, seemed to have more impact. By the eighth round, Frazier was leading six rounds to two with each judge. In the 11th round, Ali staggered but fought back, forcing the action into the 12th and 13th rounds. The fight was already decided by the 15th, when Frazier landed a left hook to Ali’s right chin, knocking down the champ for just the third time in his illustrious career. Ali got up, but Frazier won the fight by unanimous decision, retaining his title and delivering Ali the first loss of his career.The two fighters would fight twice more, in 1974 and 1975, with Ali winning both fights. The rivalry was so intense that, 20 years after their final fight, when Ali carried the torch and lit the ceremonial flame at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Frazier said, “If I had the chance, I would have pushed him in.”
Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalins daughter, on his fathers Death Witnify 2023-03-06 | Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union since 1924, dies in Moscow.Ioseb Dzhugashvili was born in 1878 in Georgia, then part of the old Russian empire. The son of a drunk who beat him mercilessly and a pious washerwoman mother, Stalin learned Russian, which he spoke with a heavy accent all his life, in an Orthodox Church-run school.While studying to be a priest at Tiflis Theological Seminary, he began secretly reading Karl Marx and other left-wing revolutionary thinkers. In 1900, Stalin became active in revolutionary political activism, taking part in labor demonstrations and strikes. Stalin joined the more militant wing of the Marxist Social Democratic movement, the Bolsheviks, and became a student of its leader, Vladimir Lenin.Stalin’s first big break came in 1912, when Lenin, in exile in Switzerland, named him to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party—now a separate entity from the Social Democrats. The following year, Stalin (finally dropping Dzugashvili and taking the new name Stalin, from the Russian word for “steel”) published an article on the role of Marxism in the destiny of Russia.In 1917, escaping from an exile in Siberia, he linked up with Lenin and his coup against the middle-class democratic government that had supplanted the czar’s rule. Stalin continued to move up the party ladder, from commissar for nationalities to secretary general of the Central Committee—a role that would provide the center of his dictatorial takeover and control of the party and the new USSR.BY WELLNESSGUIDE101.COMLEARN MOREStalin demanded—and got—absolute state control of the economy, as well as greater swaths of Soviet life, until his totalitarian grip on the new Russian empire was absolute.Stalin proceeded to annex parts of Poland, Romania, and Finland, and occupy Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In May 1941, he made himself chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars; he was now the official head of the government and no longer merely head of the party.After Germany’s surrender in the spring of 1945, Stalin oversaw the continued occupation and domination of much of Eastern Europe, despite “promises” of free elections in those countries.Stalin did not mellow with age; he pursued a reign of terror, purges, executions, exiles to the Gulag Archipelago (a system of forced-labor camps in the frozen north) and persecution in the postwar USSR, suppressing all dissent and anything that smacked of foreign, especially Western European, influence.To the great relief of many, he died of a massive heart attack on March 5, 1953. He is remembered to this day as the man who helped save his nation from Nazi domination—and as the mass murderer of the century, having overseen the deaths of between 8 million and 20 million of his own people.
John Lennon and The Beatles on the Bigger than Jesus controversy Witnify 2023-03-04 | In England, no one took much notice of the John Lennon quotation that later set off a media frenzy in America. Chalk it up to a fundamental difference in religious outlook between Britain and America, or to a fundamental difference in sense of humor. Whatever the reason, it was only after the American press got hold of his words some five months later that the John Lennon comment that first appeared in the London Evening Standard on March 4, 1966, erupted into the “Bigger than Jesus” scandal that brought a semi-official end to the giddy phenomenon known as Beatlemania.In their original context, Lennon’s remarks were clearly meant not as a boast, but as a sardonic commentary on the waning importance of religion. “Christianity will go,” Lennon said. “It will vanish and shrink….We’re more popular than Jesus now.” It was only one comment in an interview that covered such wide-ranging topics as gorilla suits and car phones, but it was this comment alone that made its way into the American teenybopper magazine DATEbook several months later, boiled down to the straightforward line, “We’re more popular than Jesus.”From there, a handful of Bible Belt disc jockeys took over, declaring Lennon’s remarks blasphemous and vowing an “eternal” ban on all Beatles music, past, present and future. “Our fantastic Beatle boycott is still in effect,” announced two DJs on WACI Birmingham in August 1966: “Don’t forget to take your Beatle records and your Beatle paraphernalia to any one of our 14 pickup points in Birmingham, Alabama, and turn them in this week.” The plan in Birmingham, as in various other cities around the South, was to burn the Beatles records turned in by angry listeners. Though it is unclear how many such events really took place, the story of the burnings definitely reached the Beatles. “When they started burning our records…that was a real shock,” said John Lennon years later. “I couldn’t go away knowing I’d created another little piece of hate in the world. So I apologized.”The apology Lennon offered was not for the message he was trying to convey, but for conveying it in a way that confused its meaning. At a press conference in Chicago, John explained: “I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion. I was not saying we are greater or better. I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I’m sorry I said it, really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. From what I’ve read, or observed, Christianity just seems to be shrinking, to be losing contact.”
Anne Sullivan on how she taught Helen Keller to speak Witnify 2023-03-03 | On March 3, 1887, Anne Sullivan begins teaching six-year-old Helen Keller, who lost her sight and hearing after a severe illness at the age of 19 months. Under Sullivan’s tutelage, including her pioneering “touch teaching” techniques, Keller flourished, eventually graduating from college and becoming an international lecturer and activist. Sullivan, later dubbed “the miracle worker,” remained Keller’s interpreter and constant companion until the older woman’s death in 1936.Sullivan, born in Massachusetts in 1866, had firsthand experience with being handicapped: As a child, an infection impaired her vision. She then attended the Perkins Institution for the Blind where she learned the manual alphabet in order to communicate with a classmate who was deaf and blind. Eventually, Sullivan had several operations that improved her weakened eyesight.Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, to Arthur Keller, a former Confederate army officer and newspaper publisher, and his wife Kate, of Tuscumbia, Alabama. As a baby, a brief illness, possibly scarlet fever or a form of bacterial meningitis, left Helen unable to see, hear or speak. She was considered a bright but spoiled and strong-willed child. Her parents eventually sought the advice of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone and an authority on the deaf. He suggested the Kellers contact the Perkins Institution, which in turn recommended Anne Sullivan as a teacher.Sullivan, age 20, arrived at Ivy Green, the Keller family estate, in 1887 and began working to socialize her wild, stubborn student and teach her by spelling out words in Keller’s hand. Initially, the finger spelling meant nothing to Keller. However, a breakthrough occurred one day when Sullivan held one of Keller’s hands under water from a pump and spelled out “w-a-t-e-r” in Keller’s palm. Keller went on to learn how to read, write and speak. With Sullivan’s assistance, Keller attended Radcliffe College and graduated with honors in 1904.Helen Keller became a public speaker and author; her first book, “The Story of My Life” was published in 1902. She was also a fundraiser for the American Foundation for the Blind and an advocate for racial and sexual equality, as well as socialism. From 1920 to 1924, Sullivan and Keller even formed a vaudeville act to educate the public and earn money. Helen Keller died on June 1, 1968, at her home in Easton, Connecticut, at age 87, leaving her mark on the world by helping to alter perceptions about the disabled.
